The House of Hapsburg: 


The Reigning Austrian Dynasty 




^ 


THOS. E. WATSON 


Author of "The Story of France," "Napoleon," "Life and 

Times of Andrew fackson, " "Life and Times of Thomas 

Jefferson," The "Roman Catholic Hierarchy," Etc. 


1915: 
PRESS OF THE JEFFERSONIAN PUBLISHING CO. 

Thomson, Ga. 



The House of Hapsburg: 

The Reigning Austrian Dynasty - 



By 
THOS. E. WATSON 

Author of "The Story of France," "Napoleon," "Life and 

Times of Andrew fackson, " "Life and Times of Thomas 

Jefferson," The "Roman Catholic Hierarchy," Etc. 



1915: 

PRESS OE THE JEFFERSONIAN PUBLISHING CO. 

Thomson, Ga. 



^>J 



'CI.A417308 



SEP -2 1915 '|C 



Copyright by 

THOS, E. WATSON 

1915 




THE KING. CHARLES IX, SITTING IN PARLIAMENT, WITH NAKED SWORD 

IN HAND. A PRIEST AT HIS SIDE APPROVING. ABOVE IS SEEN A 

RELIGIOUS PROCESSION ENTERING A CHURCH TO RETURN 

THANKS FOR THE KILLING OF THE PROTESTANTS. 

Wall Painting in the Pope's Palace, the Vatican. 



The House of Hapsburg: 

The Reigning Austrian Dynasty 



CHAPTER I. 



Origin of government, kings, judges, &c. ; Primitive Christianity 
and churches; For 800 years, the bishops equal in power; 
The State controlled the Church; Gregory the Great denounces 
the word Pope and the title Universal Bishop; Charlemagne 
real founder of the Medieval Papacy; The first Pope; The 
Isidorean forgeries. 

LET a score of men come together, for any social, commer- 
cial, political or religious purpose, and begin to devise 
and discuss ways and means: in a little while, it will be 
seen that the majority are ciphers, and that two or three are 
trying to lead. All things being equal, the ablest will take the 
place that nature gave him the strength to hold. 

In the olden times, the Judge of the barbarous tribe was 
undoubtedly the man who was thought to be the wisest. The 
Chief was the warrior who was bravest, strongest, and luckiest. 
As these civil and military head-men were chosen by the free 
vote of the tribe, the office of Judge and of Chief went from 
man to man, as the years rolled by. The tribe made the few 
and simple laws necessary to primitive conditions. The tribe 
divided the lands, once a year, and gave to each family its 
home. 

The Judge heard all disputes, decided each case on its 
merits, and the tribe enforced the decision. 

The Chief led the warriors against other tribes, or in the 
distant ventures which might mean the conquest of more 
desirable lands. In time, this Chief was called "King." a 
word which meant, in our familiar phrase, "The ablest to do 
things." 

The free men of the tribe elected him; after he had been 
chosen, they lifted him — seated on one of their broad, bull- 



c 

hide shields — and proclaimed him, by loud shouts and by the 
clashing - of swords on their brass-rimmed bucklers. 

Not so many years ago, we still could see a faint survival 
of this ancient custom, in "the chairing" of a public man who 
had done something which excited admiration. The old 
prints of the 18th and early 19th centuries, will show you 
the proud citizen seated in a chair, and borne on the 
shoulders of his enthusiastic neighbors. A variation of the 
honor is, "the shouldering'- of the hero of the hour, the 
catching of the person, and the carrying him around on 
the shoulders of huzzaing friends — a performance which 
illustrates how easily the sublime may become the ridiculous. 

When the King happened to be an exceptionally shrewd, 
selfish and ambitious tribesman, he might hold the office all 
his life; and if his life proved to be a long one, he might have 
a son who matured into manhood during the leadership of his 
father: this son might resemble his sire in prowess, in shrewd- 
ness, and in ambition ; and it might happen that this son, on 
the death of his father, would secure his own election to the 
vacant Chieftaincy. 

If so, hereditary monarchy began, right there. As a matter 
of fact, that is precisely the way all monarchies originated. 
The strongest man became leader, and in the course of time, 
the son succeeded the father. The form of election by the 
tribes, continued long after the kingship had become hereditary 
in the same family. 

In the beginning, there was no claim whatever of "Divine 
Right." In the beginning, there was universal recognition of 
the elective character of the office. 

Consequently, the right of the people to revolutionize the 
< rovernment, depose unworthy kings, and establish a new order 
of things, is nothing but the re-assertion of the primitive 
rights of the tribe. When our forefathers declared that all 
government, is founded on the consent of the governed, and 
cannot justly rest upon any other basis, they merely 
re-affirmed a doctrine that is as old as the human race. 

This modern Divine Right, Me-and-God jackassery, had 
no existence among the early Tuetons, Celts, Indo-Germanic 
peoples. Not until the Bishop of Rome conceived the accursed 
idea of a world-empire — a universal Theocracy — did Europe 
begin to be desolated by the Me-and-Godism of kings, czars 
and emperors. 



In all of the older empires — such as Rome, for example — 
an imperial father might be followed by a worthless son, but 
in such a case, the son was soon murdered, and another emperor 
chosen. No Divine Right kept a Commodus on the throne of 
the Antonines. No dread of a Pontifical curse kept the Romans 
from rising against Nero and Caligula. It was only when 
Superstition had cowed mankind, that such imbeciles and such 
monsters as the kings of Spain and the emperors of Germany, 
were safe from the vengeance of the people. 

How the elective bishops of the democratic church at Rome 
gradually grew in ecclesiastical and political importance, after 
the Emperor removed the capital to the Bosphorus, I have 
already related in "The Roman Catholic Hierarchy." 

Christ had paid tax: he had recognized the supremacy of 
the secular power when his enemies had sought to place him 
in an attitude of independence of Caesar. 

The Apostle Peter had written, "Submit yourselves to every 
ordinance of man" saying that it was the will of God that 
Christians should obey the laws and the king. (I. Peter 3: 
13, 14, and 15.) 

For a thousand years the Church of Christ had followed 
the Lord, in rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; 
and had agreed, with Peter, that Christians mast obey the 
secular authorities, upon the idea that in matters of temporal 
government, the State is supreme. 

Can anybody believe that either Christ or his Apostles ever 
dreamed of deposing Tiberius Csesar? 

Can any sane, intelligent, Bible-reading Catholic, believe 
that Peter and Paul ever dreamed of pulling down one prince 
and setting up another, overthrowing one government and 
establishing another? 

Does any rational human being believe, that the New Testa- 
ment gives the church the authority to make laws, as to civil 
relations within a State? 

We Americans, now see. with almost incredulous astonish- 
ment the enforcement of the Pope's infamous Ne temere law. 
to the irreparable injury of Protestant wives of Romanist 
husbands, and to the utter subversion of oar State lams. 

Therefore, we should be especially interested in the begin- 
nings of this monstrous usurpation of power by the bishops of 
Rome. 



No clearer and more accurate history of the gradual 
expansion of Christian sacerdotalism was ever written, than 
"The Papacy," of the Abbe Guettee. D. D.. who remained a 
Catholic, after having ceased to be a priest. His book was 
published in 1SG7. with an introduction by Bishop A. C. 
Coxe, of New York. 

The Abbe Guettee says: "History shows us that the 
Fathers of the Bishops, during the first eight centuries, have 
given to Holy Scripture the same interpretation,' 1 as the old 
Catholics and the Protestants give it. 

The Old Catholics, whose Regionary Archbishop in Amer- 
ica is the illustrious ex-Bishop Vilatte. of Fra«tfe (excom- 
municated by the Pope for favoring the separation of Church 
and State), hold that all the Apostles wem-endowed with equal 
power and authority, reject the pretensions of the Pope, regard 
the Saviour as the only infallible head/ of the church, look to 
the Scriptures for guidance, deny that Christ is corporeally 
present in the bread and wine of the sacrament; allow divorce, 
on the Scriptural grounds of adultery and malicious desertion, 
teach the equality of the sexes, and recognize the supremacy 
of the State, in all matters of government. 

Between this position and that of the Protestants, there is 
no very material difference; and the profound Catholic schol »- 
Guettee, declares that this was the creed of the Roman Church, 
for the first 800 years after Christ. 

On page 77 of "The Papacy,'' we read an extract from the 
Council of Carthage "(St. Cyprian: pp. 329, 330. Bened. edi- 
tion). 

"None of us sets himself up as a, bishop of bishops every 

bkhop having full liberty, and COMPLETE POWER, as he 
cannot be judged by another, neither can he judge another."' 

The simple, undeniable truth is, that the Roman bishops 
soon began to look upon themselves as of more consequence 
than provincial bishops, because Rome was the capital and 
centre of the empire. Just as a bank in London holds its head 
higher than one in Glasgow, and a publishing house in New 
York looks down upon one in the village where I live, so a 
bishop of Rome— dwelling in a palace, consulted by the rulers 
of the Roman world, and holding toward them a confidential 
pastoral relation — humanly put a higher estimate upon them- 
selves, than they put upon the unimportant bishops, of unim- 
portant towns. 



9 

Therefore, the Roman church sought leadership and 
authority, while the other churches resisted her claims for 
hundreds of years ; and Christendom was divided by the great 
schism, because the Eastern churches would never submit to 
the arrogant claims of Rome. 

During these centuries of conflict, the Roman bishops made 
no claim whatever to be other than Roman citizens subject 
to Roman laws. 

The Emperor Constantine not only convoked the Council 
of Xicea, but presided over it, and confirmed its decrees. The 
Emperor Theodosius summoned the Council of 381 : no West- 
ern bishop was present, and its presiding officer was the Bishop 
of Antioch. The Emperor Gratianus convoked another 
Council, at Rome (A. D. 382) < but the Bishop of Rome did not 
preside over its deliberations, or confirm its decrees, although 
it made important decisions on Christian creed and discipline. 

The Emperor Theodosius II. (431) summoned the Council 
of Ephesus. saying, in the call for it, that '"the troubles of the 
church have made us think it indispensable to convoke the 
bishops of the whole world." 

More than 400 years have passed since the Christian faith 
began to spread; and the church is full of troubles — doc- 
trinal, of course — but it is not the Bishop of Rome who takes 
jurisdiction of the matter and issues orders to the Emperor. 
No ! It is just the other way. The State — the Crcsar — takes 
jurisdiction; the State orders tligjCouncil of the Church; and 
the State says to the Bishop of Rome. ''Present yourself at 
Ephesus, at the Pentecost, and bring with you such of your 
bishops," &c. 

(•'The Papacy," page 112.) 

Gregory the Great, who was Rome's bishop (or pope, as 
all bishops were then called,) under the Emperor Justinian, 
wrote, that the Council of Chalcedon had offered the title of 
"universal bishop," to the Roman prelate, but that title had 
been rejected, as unwarranted by Scripture, &c. 

Gregory, who is one of the Roman Catholic Saints, added, 
in his celebrated letter to the Emperor — 

"I say without the least hesitation, whoever calls himself 
the universal bishop, or desires this title, is the precursor of 
Anti-Christ (made so) by his pride, "because he thus attempts 
to raise himself above the others." 

"The error into which he falls springs from pride equal to 
that of Anti-Christ; for, as that Wicked One wished to be 



10 

regarded as exalted above other men, like a god, so likewise 
whoever would be called sole bishop, exalteth himself above 
others." 

Could any person, Catholic or not, fail to see that 
Gregory the Great was fiercely battling against the usurpation 
by any Christian bishop of superiority over others? 

It was GOO years after Christ, and the Bishop of Rome had 
not discovered that he was God-on-earth, exalted over all other 
bishops and the sole spokesman of the infallible Word of 
Christ. 

And he was pleading and remonstrating with Caesar, the 
State, against the assumption, by any one whatsoever, of the 
very title which the popes finally bought from their imperial 
masters. 

In his letter to the Patriarch of Alexandria, Gregory the 
Great addresses him as "Your Holiness !" Gregory assures his 
brother bishop, that they are equals; and he gently chides the 
Patriarch for having written that Gregory "commanded" cer- 
tain things. "I pray you, let me never again hear this word 
command, for I know who I am, and who you are. By your 

position, we are brethren (equals) May your sweet Holiness 

do so no more in future, I beseech you, for you take from 
yourself what you (/ire in excess to another." 

Gregory proscribed, as vainglorious, the word Pope. 

So great was Rome's jealousy of Constantinople, and so 
afraid was the Roman bishop that the Patriarch of the Eastern 
new capital would be first in securing the new title of Read 
of the Churches, that Boniface III. obtained from the Emperor 
Phocas, the primacy which Constantinople had desired. The 
imperial decree merely said that the Roman Church, not that 
of the Eastern city, was the head of all the churches. 

Thus, a State official, who got his position by atrocious 
murder, selected the priest who was to be the Chief of the 
Christians ! 

It was to be many centuries before that way of doing 
things would be reversed, and a church, official. w T ho got his 
position by atrocious crime, should select the chief for the 
sf (ite. 

The beginning of the new phase was due mainly to the 
Emperor, Charlemagne. 

The Roman empire had sunk, the head of the church at 
Constantinople feared the ambition of the Bishop of Rome; 
and the latter turned to Charlemagne, whose father had 



11 

bought from the Soman prelate the right to depose the last 
of the Do-Nothing Kings of France. 

Charlemagne was a tower of strength, and the wily Bishop 
of Rome tempted him with a bait which fired his imagination. 

We are assured by those who claimed to know, that Napo- 
leon was lured into the fatal Austrian marriage by the sug- 
gestion that Maria Louisa was "a daughter of the Ca?sars." 
In a somewhat similar manner, the earlier French ruler was 
dazzled by the idea of seizing the Western sceptre which the 
Csesars had weilded. 

Charlemagne came to an agreement with the Roman bishop ; 
and the haughty prelate, thus strengthened, indulged in a 
stjde of defiance to the Eastern Emperor that no bishop of 
Rome had ever used, before this unscrupulous Adrian I. 
received from a conqueror a part of the spoil of war, and 
began to call it by the new name of "The Patrimony of St. 
Peter." 

Charlemagne continued the ruinous policy of his father 
(Pepin), and gave to the Roman bishop lands, cities, castles, 
treasures, and powers, in return for favors which in modern 
eyes seem very shadowy, indeed. Pepin could doubtless have 
dethroned the feeble French King, without the Roman bishop's 
sanction — but he did not think so. Charlemagne could have 
conquered just as large an empire without the aid of the 
Iron Crown, and the Bishop's blessing — but he did not 
think so. 

Even in our day, the Church must bless the Army, before 
it fights; and the fact that the Moslem does it one way, the 
Greek Catholic another way, the Roman Catholic a third way, 
and the Protestants, a variety of ways, does not lessen the 
necessity for having the holy thing done. 

Adrian made the most of the advantages of his alliance 
with the mighty Emperor Charlemagne; for he not only held 
a high tone with the weak Emperor of the East, but he roundly 
rebuked the Patriarch of Constantinople, and proclaimed for 
the first time, the statement, that Constantine had given Rome 
(/nd most of Italy to the church! 

Nobody had ever heard of it, before; and,. strange to say, 
Adrian now, for the first time, exhibited the Forged Decretals, 
upon which the monstrous new claims of Rome's bishops were 
based, and with which the Roman popes ruled kings and peo- 
ples for a thousand years— AND STILL RULES SOME OF 
THEM! 



12 

Briefly, the purpose of the forger of the Isidorean Decretals 
was to concentrate all ecclesiastical power at Rome. The 
object was accomplished before the forgery was detected. 
Afterwards, when the forgery was demonstrated, and conceded 
by Roman Catholic scholars, the concentrated power of Rome 
was too strong to be demolished. Thus, the work of the forger 
was made more triumphant than the work of Gregory the 
Great, Saint Augustine, and the writers of the New Testa- 
ment. To prevent the Catholic laymen from learning that 
papal claims are founded on Forgeries, and not on the Gospels, 
a beautifully simple device was adopted: The laymen are 
privileged to read the Forgeries, but not the Gospels/ 



13 



CHAPTER II. 



Charlemagne's stupendous blunder; The Pope kissed the Emperor s 
foot but the Emperor's grandson kissed the Pope's foot; The 
Pope deposes the Empress Agnes, and she becomes his con- 
cubine- Union of Church and State proposed by Hildebrand; 
The two robbers, the King and the Pope; The Emperor goes to 
Canossa; Wars of sects; Excommunication. 

It was on Christmas Day, 800, that Charlemagne went into 
the old church of St. Peter's, at Rome, and was crowned 
Emperor of the West. A few days before, a council had 
decided, for the -first time, that the Bishop of Home was not 
subject to its jurisdiction. . 

As the Abbe Guettee says, "The modern papacy, a mixed 
institution, half political, and half religious, was established; 
a new era was beginning for the Church of Jesus Christ-an 
era of intrigues and struggles, depotism and revolution, inno- 
vations and scandals." 

Charlemagne made a stupendous blunder, followed soon 
by stupendous fatalities, when he set the precedent of accept- 
ing the crown at the hands of the Bishop of Rome. The 
tears had united in themselves the higher prerogatives, secu- 
lar and ecclesiastical, because the office of Pontifex Maximus 
carried a traditiinal prestige and authority which might 
become troublesome to usurping emperors, if the benate 
should revolt against imperial tyranny. But the Emperors ot 
Rome whether of the East or the West, had never been 
crowned by Christian bishops. Confident in his own strength, 
and indulgent toward an ally who had apparently been so 
useful and so powerless to thwart his own plans, Charlemagne 
accepted the crown which the bishop had no right to give, not 
suspecting that the successors of the bishop would construe 
the act into a papal prerogative to not only give, but to take 
away the crown of kings. . 

The son of Charlemagne happened to be precisely the kind 
of monarch to further the aims of the Roman Church. He 
was thoroughly pious, a slave of priests, and a weakling ruler, 
against whom his sons rebelled. Chaos ensued, and Rome s 
prelates rapidly built the papacy in the midst of the con- 
fusion of the times. Charlemagne's huge dominions were rent 
into separate kingdoms, and Louis, his grandson, became the 
ruler of Germany, the "Csesar" of the Western world. 



14 

We are told, in De Cormenin's "History of the Popes," that 
on the death of Pope Benedict III., "the Holy See remained 
vacant an entire month, the Komans being obliged to wait the 
arrival of the Emperor Louis to name a pontiff." 

After Nicholas the First had been elected by "the clergy, 
grandees, and people assembled in the holy city," the new 
Pope manifested a spirit never before exhibited by a Christian 
prelate. He caused his consecration to be celebrated with 
extraordinar} r magnificence, "and exacted that Louis should 
come on foot to meet him, that he should hold the bridle of his 
horse, and thus conduct him to the palace of the Lateran. 

Finally, the bigot monarch, before taking leave of the 
pontiff, bent his forehead in the dust, and kissed his sandals." 

This was the very first time that any secular ruler of the 
West had ever abased himself by this act of ancient Eastern 
servility; and, as it happened in the year 858, one can see how 
fast had been the decline of imperial prestige, before the swift 
advance of papal claims. 

Eginhard, the secretary of Charlemagne, declared that the 
emperor was accustomed to say, that Bishop Leo had taken 
him by surprise in putting the crown on his head ; and that, 
had he known the Bishop's intention, he would not have 
entered the church, even on so solemn an occasion as the 
Christmas celebration. 

(See Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire," page 50.) 

It is recorded that there were no visible preparations for 
Charlemagne's coronation; and that Leo suddenly placed the 
crown upon his head, as the monarch was rising from his knees, 
after his adoration of the "most holy relic, the body of St. 
Peter," &c. 

It is equally certain that Charlemagne governed the clergy, 
including the Bishop of Rome > as supremely as the Ceesars had 
formerly done, "summoning and sitting in councils, examining 
and appointing bishops, settling by capitularies the smallest 
points of church discipline and polity." (Bryce, p. 61.) 

For more than 200 years, the German emperors held the 
power to convoke councils of the church, and, often, to dictate 
the selection of popes. Even when the emperor did not name 
the pontiff, he exercised a veto power which prevented the 
election of any one who was objectionable to him. (This veto 
of the secular prince was not formally abolished until 1012.) 

It was in the eleventh century, that an ambitious and 
formidable monk, Hildebrand, commenced to intrigue against 



15 

the prescriptive rights of the emperor, and to labor for the 
supremacy of the ecclesiastical over the civil power of the 
Stale. This monk was the power behind the throne with sev- 
eral weak popes, before he grasped the papal sceptre for him- 
self, j. 
The minority of a German emperor, and the regency oi 
his mother, Agnes, presented to Hildebrand an ideal situation 
for priestly activity and machinations. 

Some of the most radical and disastrous changes in the 
history of Europe have been brought about by the pious 
woman, the subtle priest, and the weak husband, or lover, of 
the pious woman. From the wife of Clovis to the wife of 
Napoleon III., is a lengthy period of years; but Rome's method 
of using the woman to manipulate the man, was exactly the 
same in both cases. 

Working upon the superstition, the piety, the maternal 
affections, hopes, and fears of the Empress Agnes, the Pope 
Alexander II.— the Pope who was four times driven out of 
power by rival Popes— took a tremendous step forward, in the 
advancement of papal power. ,,'•-, a 

Instigated by Hildebrand, the German monks kidnapped 
the youthful Emperor, Henry IV., held him in captivity, and 
decreed the deposition of the Regent-Empress, Agnes ! The 
weak woman yielded, went to Italy to prostrate herself at the 
feet of Pope Alexander; and he found her penitence and her 
beautv so irresistible, that he forthwith forgave her, and 
installed her in a convent, conveniently near at hand, where 
she enioved the honor of becoming his concubine. 

(De Cormenin, History of the Popes, pages 35 1 and 8.) 
The fact that she is now one of the "Saints" of the Roman 
Church does not prove, or disprove, anything in particular. 
During the reign of Pope Alexan der-or of Anti- Pope 
Honorius; whichever it is-Hildebrand wrote to the Chief Min- 
ister of the young Emperor of Germany : 

"The royal and sacerdotal power are united in Jesus Christ, 
in heaven. They should equally form an indissoluble alliance on 
earth for each has need of the other to rule the people. The 
priesthood is protected by the strength of royalty, and royalty 
is aided by the influence of the priesthood. 

"The king bears the sword to strike the enemies of the 
church; the pope bears the thunders of anathema to crush the 
enemies of the sovereign. 



1G 

"Let the throne and the church, then, unite, and the whole 
world will be subjected to their law !" 

To this sinister and cynical height of arrogance had the 
Roman bishops risen, since the day. two hundred and sixty-one 
years before, that the crafty Leo had by strategem put the 
oil and the crown on the head of Charlemagne — and had then 
knelt, and kissed the Emperor's foot! 

To this monstrous distortion, had come Christ's command, 
and Peter's admonition, both of whom placed the priesthood 
and the sacerdotal power in loyal subjection and allegiance to 
the royal supremacy of the State. 

We may justly regard this un-Scriptural and most insolent 
declaration of Hildebrand as the beginning of all those religi- 
ous wars which literally made Europe drip with blood, shed in 
the name of The Prince of Peace. 

Nero condemned to death a few scores of Roman aristo- 
crats, and a few hundred Christians, thereby earning for his 
name an immortal infamy. But Nero was not a priest, made 
no pretense of being a Christian, and did not claim to speak 
for either Jove or Jesus. 

Hildebrand, of course, professed to be a Christian; and it 
was in the name of the preacher of The Sermon on the Mount, 
that he unleashed the most devilish passions of human nature. 
by proclaiming, with papal sanction, a new doctrine that 
meant war between Church and State, so long as the Roman 
Church had the strength to wage the war. 

The defiant, lawless introduction into Great Britain, Can- 
ada 5 and the United States, of the infamous Ne tenure decree, 
proves that Hildebrand's poison is like sin itself — incurable, 
ineradicable, a permanent curse to the human race. 

After the deposition of the Empress Agnes, the next great 
step in papal usurpation, was the investiture of the Duke of 
Normandy with the sovereignty of England ! 

Influenced by Hildebrand, Pope Alexander II. "blessed" the 
banner of the Norman, dispossessed the legitimate king of 
England, and officially gave the crown to Duke William, the 
Conqueror. According to contract, the Duke doubled the 
trih ate which England had been paging to Rome. 

Thus, the King and the Pope united to rule the people — 
and to rob them — as Hildebrand had said they should. 

The entire period during which kings and popes ruled 
Europe was sunk under that fatal unity of royal and sacerdotal 



17 

powers. When the robbers could agree upon a division of the 
spoil, the people were simply ruled and robbed, without having 
any means to protest, much less resist. 

But when the two robbers — royalty and sacerdotalism — 
could not agree upon a division of the spoils, the robbers quar- 
relled, and the people had to fight — during which periods they 
were not only ruled and robbed, but were made to slaughter 
each other, until the robbers came to new terms of agree- 
ment. 

Then, peace was declared, anthems were sung, prayers said. 
and the former status restored, in which the people were 
merely ruled and robbed — as per Hildebrand's benevolent sug- 
gestion to the priestly advisers of the young Emperor 
Henry IV. 

When Cardinal Hildebrand became the power behind the 
throne with Pope Nicholas II., (1058-1061) he arbitrarily 
ousted the people and the clergy from their share in the elec- 
tion of popes. He concentrated the authority in the college of 
cardinals. This was a revolution. At one blow, he destroyed 
the Christian-church democracy of a thousand years, and 
created a clerical aristocrcy, which sought to rule the world 
through a monarch of their own choosing, the Pope. 

When Hildebrand became Pope, in 1073, he took the name 
Gregory VII., and at once set about establishing a sacerdotal 
despotism, whose head should be God-on-earth. with all princes 
at his feet. 

From that time onward, the history of Europe is the record 
of bitter, bloody struggles between Church and State — the 
Civil power striving to maintain the supremacy which had 
never before been questioned. 

Of course the most dramatic episode in the head-strong 
career of Gregory VII., was the submission of Henry IV., 
Emperor of Germany. The picture of a great monarch, 
standing three days in the snow outside the castle of Canossa, 
praying for peace with the peasant who had risen to be 
Pope, struck the imagination of men, and it was never 
forgotten. 

That the Emperor stooped, in order that he might conquer, 
was apparent a short while afterwards, when the haughty 
Pope tasted the gall and wormwood of defeat, became a fugi- 
tive from Rome, and died "like a dog" at Salerno. (1085.) 

But Gregory bequeathed his baleful, un-Christian concep- 
tion of the Papacy to his successors; and the conflict between 



a Church which claimed universal dominion, and a State which 
fought to maintain its independence, went on, from generation 
to generation. In this unnatural contest, countless lives were 
sacrificed, rich provinces desolated, the humanities well- 
nigh banished, and the European world plunged into the 
horrors of the Dark Ages. 

The wide-spread carnage, entailed upon the Roman Empire 
by the disputes over the true nature of Christ (whether he 
was like unto God, or was of the substance of God.) had so 
Aveakened the West that the Northern barbarians made it their 
prey: and then ambition of the Athanasians expanded into a 
determination to not only make all human beings orthodox, 
but to make them see in the Pope, a God. at Avhose command 
the gates of Heaven and Hell closed or opened. 

When men accepted excommunication as civil death and 
eternal damnation, it is no wonder that darkness covered the 
earth, and benumbed mortals trembled at the frown of a monk. 



19 



CHAPTER III. 

Pope Boniface VIII; His conflict with Philip the Fair; His Bull, 
Unam Sanctum; The two swords of Rome; Omnipotence of 
the Roman Church; Corruption of the priests; Relics: Super- 
stition, Ignorance; Slavery; Venality of the Church; Making 
Christ out of bread and wine.. 

In the year 1294, an Italian, whose name was Benedict 
Cajetan, reigned under the title of Pope Boniface VIII. Of 
him, after he had died miserably, a discredited and imprisoned 
man, the papal historian Platina says that he had "made it 
his business to infuse terror rather than religion into emperors, 
kings, princes, nations, and states; and would pretend to give 
and take away kingdoms, to banish and recall men, as he 
thought fitting, to his pride and covetousness, which were 
unspeakable." 

In the early years of Pope Boniface VIII., Edward I. was 
King of England, and Philip IV., of France. Between the 
two realms there was strife, and Philip decided to lay a tax 
on the dropsical wealth of the Church, to raise funds where- 
with to fight the English. Boniface vehemently objected to 
this invasion of the holy property of God, and he issued a 
decree (Bull), threatening damnation on all who should obey 
the King. 

On the other side of the Channel, Edward I. threatened 
to outlaw any bold Briton who refused to pay his papal dues. 

Sadly missing the inflow of French gold, the ready-witted 
Pope proclaimed a Jubilee, and promised to forgive the sins 
of all such mortals as would hie to Rome in the year 1300 — 
provided they confessed and did penance. A vast multitude 
of sinful and purse ful people pilgrimaged Romeward, choked 
the streets of the Eternal City, opened their lips with stories 
of their sins, and opened their purses to pay the penance. 

Thus every soul was made happy : the sinners cleared their 
criminal dockets, and the Papa filled his pious treasury. 

Bouved by the arrogance of ready cash, the. Pope renewed 
his combat with the King of France. This monarch, known 
to history as Philip the Handsome, was centuries ahead of his 
times in some matters, just as several of the German emperors 
were. He had imprisoned a Catholic bishop, and threatened 
to put him to death for high treason. 



20 

The Pope thundered against the king, forbidding him to 
collect taxes out of the Church property, and boldly declaring 
that "God has placed us (the Pope) above kings and king- 
doms." 

Philip retorted, "'Your illustrious stupidity should know 
that in secular matters we (the king) are subject to no one." 

The French Catholics stood by their monarch, solemnly 
proclaimed their independence of the Italian Pope, and thus 
established the Gallican liberties, which cut so large a figure 
in after times. 

The furious Boniface replied with his celebrated decree 
(Bull) Unam sanctum (130-2) to the effect that the Roman 
Church has two swords, the spiritual and the secular, and that 
kings, emperors, princes and warriors use the secular sword 
"at the order and permission of the priests 

As to the ecclesiastical sword, that is the weapon of the 
Church alone, and "should the supreme spiritual power go 
astray, it cannot be judged by man, but by God only." 

"Moreover, we declare, assert, determine, and proclaim that 
submission to the bishop of Rome is absolutely necessary for all 
men TO SALVATION "." 

No wonder the austere Catholic, Dante, wrote, "The Church 
of Rome falls into the mire because the double honour and 
the double rule, confounded within her, defile herself and her 
dignity." (Harms worth's History, Vol. 5, p. 3744.) 

It will be instructive for us to see at least some of the 
consequences of the monstrous claims of the Papacy. 

It being dangerous to think, and fatal to differ from the 
dogmatic creed of Rome, learning sank to its lowest ebb. What 
scholar would give himself to inquiry and research, when such 
a path was the narrow one, leading to dungeon and stake? 
What priest would cultivate his mind, when it answered all 
the demands on his time and intellect to go through the cere- 
monial prescribed by the Church ? 

When the more enlightened French clergy accused the 
Italian prelates of dense illiteracy, their reply was, that St. 
Peter did not know everything, and yet he became gatekeeper 
of Heaven ! 

Self-complacent ignorance took possession of the Roman 
clergy, as a natural result of the system which demanded unity, 
obedience, conformity, rather than investigation and truth. 



21 



The idle brain being the Devil's favorite work-room, the 
monasteries and nunneries almost put the tavern and the 
brothel out of business. Who would pay the professional 
woman, when nuns were so accessible and inexpensive? 




POPE JOHN VII, KILLED IN BED WITH A WOMAN. 



Some of the monks married, like decent fellows, and 
reared families. Others, less decent, took concubines, and used 
the vestaments of the Mass to clothe their paramours. 

The golden vessels of the Altar were melted, and rings, 
bracelets and other useful articles of adornment made out of 



22 

the metal. The Christianity of Italy was on the point of 
extinction. (Harmsworth, Vol. 5, p. 3720.) 

Every church, however, maintained its elaborate and sensu- 
ous ceremonial worship — the music, the paintings, the images, 
the candles, the incense. &c. 

Every church set immense store by its sacred "relics." In 
one place, was the identical crown of thorns that Christ had 
worn ! (Gibbon's Rome, Vol. IV.. p. 122.) 

In another, was a piece of the cradle in which Christ had 
lain, and the candle which had burnt at his birth. 

Another monastery could show the wood of which Peter 
wished to make the three tabernacles, upon the Mount of 
Transfiguration. 

Yet another, had some of the Virgin's maternal milk. Of 
course, there were many nails of the Cross, and innumerable 
bits of the Cross itself, in addition to the complete one kept 
at Rome. 

The priest was everywhere, and almost everything. No 
walk of life could escape the tread of this broker who trans- 
acted all the affairs between man and Gocl. The priest, and 
his office, and his officiating, and his fee, were omnipresent, 
omnipotent, and omnivorous. He was at once the highway 
and the toll-gate, the ocean and the custom-house collector; the 
shepherd, the shearer and the owner of the flock. 

Untaxed himself, he taxed everybody. His feet were as 
impartial as those of Death: with equal step he approached the 
palace and the hut. He fleeced the prince and the pauper, the 
fool and the sage, the cradle and the grave. Like the ele- 
phant's trunk, which can with equal ease prostrate the oak and 
pick up a pin. the priest could empty the treasure-chest of 
kings, and break in two the lean loaf of the serf. 

He taught the people that criminals fleeing to sanctuary, 
must be left to the protection of the Church — and the priests 
reduced the fugitives from justice to perpetual slavery, and 
fared sumptuously every day off their unpaid labor ! 

The priest preached the Brotherhood of Man, and then 
compelled the king to adopt Fugitive-slave laws, which piti- 
lessly flung back into the monastery the poor wretches who 
had escaped that living death ! 

(See "Medieval Sicily," p. 208, Duckworth & Co., London, 
1910. "The Sanctuaries," Rev. Chas. Cox, LL.D., Geo. Allen 
& Sons, London, 1911.) 



23 

Everything- required a priestly Blessing-, and the blessing 
must be paid for, as per Roman tariff-scale of prices. The 
dwelling, the spring, the orchard, the pasture, the wheat field. 
all needed a blessing. So likewise did the harvest, the eggs, 
the cheese, the apples, the grapes. The cattle going to graze, 
needed a blessing: the bees when they swarmed, must be 
blessed : the very dogs, at the beginning of the chase, must 
wait in leash until a paunchy, itchy-palm priest could bless 
them in the name of Holy Mother Church. 

God ! What abasement can an organized Imposture bring 
upon the human race ! 

It was at this period that the Confessional was instituted, 
and that the monkish doctrine of Radbertus was adopted — a 
doctrine which made God-creators out of priests of all degrees, 
colors and characters. Given a flour-mill, a bakery, and a 
priest, innumerable Gods could be produced in every wheat 
field. 

Well might the modernist emperor of Germany, Frederick 
II., exclaim, "How long will this mummery last?" 

The priests were following the pan-cake through the streets, 
and sane Christians were falling upon their knees as the pan- 
cake passed. The priests had declared that they had mirac- 
ulously called God from on high to get into the wafer, and 
that He had obeyed. Hence, the people knelt ! 

That was in the year 1231. The mummery yet lasts. Not 
only does enlightened Europe bow to this blasphemous and 
horrible doctrine, but the President of the United States, the 
Army, the Navy, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court all do it ! 



24 



CHAPTER R . 

Popish forgeries: German Emperors and the Papacy; Rhodolph of 
Hapsburg; The fable about his election; The facts; Albert of 
Hapsburg clashes with Pope Boniface VIII; The Emperor 
triumphs, yet surrenders; The Pope's captivity and death. 

The ugly word "forgery" plays a big part in the evolution 
of the "Vicar of Christ.'' Leaving out the tamperings with 
Scriptural texts, the interpolations which favor popery, but 
contradict Christ and the Apostles, the historian is amazed 
at the success of such patent fabrications as the Isidorian 
Decretals and the Donation of Constantine. 

The supreme, unlimited prerogative of the Pope was 
recognized, and the mythical gift of Constantine had been 
rendered useless by the real donations of Pepin, Charlemagne 
and the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, 

The Bishop of Rome was not only the spiritual sovereign, 
but had become a temporal monarch. In both capacities, he 
must henceforth be reckoned with. Hence we see him, through 
the mirk of the Middle Ages, not only striving to make foreign 
kings his vassals, but to establish his own despotism over the 
Italian cities. 

The German house of Hohenstauffen produced two great 
men, Frederick Barbarossa, and Frederick II. ; and their reigns 
were prolonged contests with the Popes. It was the struggle 
of the Civil power, the State, to escape the octopus tentacles 
of the episcopal power, the Church. 

Owing to the destruction of European libraries, the closing 
of the schools, the shackling of free speech, the frightful perse- 
cution of all who differed from the Roman clergy, the combat 
between German emperors and Italian priests was unequal. 
Ghostly weapons turned the edge of sword-. The anathema of 
the Church appalled the stoutest hearts. Again and again, the 
Emperor, fighting for < 4vil liberty, was so weakened by papal 
thunders, that his armies melted away. 

The world of today cannot realize the heroism of Henry 
IV., of Barbarossa, and of Frederick II. 

These powerful Germans were, in a sense, the forerunners 
of Frederick the Great, of Gustavus Adolphus, of Maurice 
of Saxony, of William the Silent. Particularly might Fred- 



25 

erick II. be regarded as the royal kraut cornier of the modern 
State, modern literature and mental independence. 

But the war between these Hohenstauffens and the Italian 
papacy never ceased, until the last prince of the house had 
been cruelly put to death. 

Then came Rhodolph of Hapsburg, a Swabian count, who 
was the candidate of the papal party for the imperial crown. 
(1273.) The Pope was paid for his support by the cession of 
Sicily and Lower Italy, an empire in themselves. 

The Eomanist writers tell a pretty story of Rhodolph's 
piety, and a monk's gratitude, and to this incident attribute 
Rhodolph's elevation to the imperial dignity. 

The facts, as related in Coxe's standard and elaborate "His- 
tory of the House of Austria" (Vol. I., p. 23), are that 
Rhodolph had personally escorted a prince of the Roman 
Church (one of the seven electors of the Holy Roman Empire) 
through the dangerous passes of the Alps, as the powerful 
prelate was on his way to Rome to receive the formal investi- 
ture of the Pope into the office to which he had been nominated 
by. the Emperor. Instead of a disinterested service rendered 
a poor monk, there was the courtly attention of an ambitious 
and rising temporal prince, to one of the seven men who would 
choose the next Emperor of Germany — quite a different story, 
as you can readily see. 

The prelate, whose friendship was won by the subtle flat- 
tery of Rhodolph's personal escort over the Alps, was Werner 
of Eppenstein, Archbishop of Mentz. The intrigues of 
Werner in favor of Rhodolph, were greatly aided by the fact 
that his candidate had three marriageable daughters, whose 
"hands" were virtually traded for votes, the matrimonial 
alliances being made with the electoral princes of Bavaria, 
Saxony, and Brandenburgh. 

Rhodolph was a strong man < and, for those days, an enlight- 
ened ruler, and by no means a slave of the Pope. He extended 
his dominions by conquest, being by far the greatest Captain 
of his age; and his genius for law and order was creative, as 
well as aggressive. (Died 1291.) 

Up to this time the head-gear of the Popes had been the 
biretta (red cap) : it was now changed to the double crown, 
symbolical of the spiritual and the temporal power. (The 
triple crown was as yet afar off.) 

Albert, son of Rhodolph, found himself in great difficul- 
ties, because of an insurrection of the nobles, and the menaces 



26 

of the Kings of Bohemia, and Hungary; therefore, another 
ideal situation arose for papal intervention. 

Pope Boniface refused to sanction Albert's election to the 
Imperial dignity, asserting that he, alone, was the sovereign 
of all Christendom. 

So insane was his arrogance, that he received the ambas- 
sadors from Germany, seated on a throne, with a crown on 
his head, and "the sword of Constantine" girt about his 
middle. 

Albert defied the Pope, and asserted that he owed his 
kingly office to the votes of the electors. 

Boniface thundered against the German monarch, declared 
that his throne belonged to another, and forbade Albert's 
subjects to obey him, "on pain of excommunication." 

With an army put into vigorous motion, Albert crushed 
his German enemies, and remained master of the situation; 
yet, strange to say, he made peace with the Pope on terms 
which gave all the subsequent advantages to papal usurpers. 
He publicly acknowledged that 1- e Empire of the West had 
been transferred by the Popes from the Greeks to the Ger- 
mans, in the person of Charlemagne, and that the right of 
choosing a King of the Romans, exercised by the German 
electors, had been derived from the Popes of Rome ! 

("House of Austria," Coxe, p. 84.) 

This was a far cry, indeed, from the Christmas Day, 303 
years before, when Gregory had slipped the crown on Charle- 
magne's head, and then knelt down, and kissed the monarch's 
feet! 

Albert's surrender might have involved him in a war with 
the fearless Philip the Handsome, King of France, had 
Boniface lived. 

But Boniface did not live. Philip snatched him off his 
Saint-Petrine pedestal, flung him into prison, mocked and 
maltreated him with such vehement scorn and hatred, that 
Boniface died of rage and shame. (Sept. 7. 1303.) 

Philip compelled the Pope, in 1304, to leave Rome, and 
to take up his residence in France, at Avignon, where, for the 
next century, the "Vicars of Christ" were vassals of the 
French Kings. (Coxe House of Austria. P. 84-5.) 



27 



CHAPTER V. 

The Swiss hero, Arnold Winkelreid; War between Popes; Three at 
a time; John Wycliffe of England; His English Bible; Perse- 
c'uted; John Huss of Bohemia; Pope John XXIII. and the 
Council of Constance; Pope John a monster; Deposed; Crimes 
proved on him and confessed by him. 

In the books which were used by school children, fifty 
years ago, there was a piece of poetry, beginning — 

'"Make way for liberty!' he cried: 
Made way for liberty ? and died." 

I have heard it declaimed, Friday afternoons, many a time, 
before school dismissed for Monday. 

The incident immortalized in the poem, grew out of an 
uprising of the Swiss peasants against the terrible oppres- 
sions of Hapsburg tyranny. (1386.) 

The Austrian Knights, clad in steel armor, and armed with 
long lances, disdained the "naked rabble" which had risen in 
revolt; and when they saw the peasants kneel to pray^ before 
the battle began, the Austrians exclaimed, '"They are begging 
for pardon !" 

But when they rose from their knees, the ill-armed peas- 
ants dashed down upon the Austrian line. The knights 
stood in close rank, with long spears advanced, and the poor 
peasants were simply impaled upon this steel fence. 

The Austrians, seeing their opportunity, began to spread 
out, from the rear of their phalanx, to enclose the Swiss. The 
peasants were almost in despair, when Arnold de Winkelreid", 
a knight of Underwalden, burst from the Swiss ranks, exclaim- 
ing— 

"I will open a passage into the line : protect, dear country- 
men, my wife and children !" 

He threw himself upon the steel points, gathering as many 
as he could reach, into his breast; bore them with him to the 
ground, and thus "Made way for liberty, and died." 

The peasants rushed into the gap that Arnold had made, 
and fought with such desperation that the Austrians were 
utterly defeated. 

The Emperor Leopold II. was among the slain, who num- 
bered 2,000, one-third of whom were nobles. This battle of 



28 



Sempach led to other successes which finally established the 
liberties of the Swiss. 

During the dark centuries that saw the Popes furiously 
engaged in politics, the Papacy itself broke its spell. It became 
so clear to all eyes that the "Vicar of Christ' 1 was more eager 








■ wm 




PETRARCH'S SISTER WAS RAPED BY POPE BENEDICT, XII, AT AVIGNON. 

for money and power than any other potentate in Europe; it 
was so scandalously apparent that his zeal for the promotion 
of his "nephews" was a parental ambition for his bastard sons ; 
it was so well known who were the concubines of the various 
successors of Gregory VII., that all the West insensibly drifted 
into a scantily veiled mockery of the priesthood and the 



29 

Church. When Dante, the Catholic, domiciled popes in hell, 
and when Petrarch, the Catholic, hotly denounced the sodom- 
like debaucheries of the papal court at Avignon, men could no 
longer be blind and deaf to the awful impostures of Rome. 

Worst of all, two priests, one a Frenchman and the other an 
Italian, contended frantically for the headship of the Church, 
each cursing the other with frightful anathemas, and each 
drawing after himself a train of warring prelates. 

Papal ordnance boomed : papal missiles hurtled through 
the air : papal cohorts clashed against each other in Spain. 
France, Italy, Germany. England and Scotland. 

Acording to Pope Boniface, he was God-on-earth. and 
Benedict was anti-Christ, the son of Belial, the enemy of God. 

According to Pope Benedict, Boniface was anti-Christ, 
the son of Belial, the enemy of God. 

That kind of thing lasted for twenty years ! Who cannot 
see that the Popes themselves laid the foundations for the 
revolt of the human intellect^ for the Renaissance, and for the 
Reformation? Their own monstrous pretensions, greed, lust, 
tyrannies, hypocrisies paved the way for their overthrow. 

The scandal continued to distract the European world 
until it culminated in three Popes! Gregory. Benedict and 
Alexander denounced each other as impostors, heretics, &c, 
and each of these Gods-on-earth had his devoted following. 
Yet the impossibility of three at a time was obvious, and the 
uncertainty as to each, naturally bred doubt as to all. 

Early in the fourteenth century, Wyckliffe was born, and 
when he died, in 1384, the seed of Protestantism had been 
well sown in England, by his translation of the Bible into 
the common language of the people. This was the first com- 
plete version of the Old and the New Testaments in English. 
Wyckliffe employed his poor priests to make copies of the 
Book, and it was widely circulated among the Catholics who 
could read. We are told that the effect was wonderful. It 
was in vain that the Pope and the Councils attempted to 
silence Wyckliffe. Protected by persons high in State, he 
held on in his undaunted way; and while he was forced to 
"dodge from pillar to post," he never made the least surrender 
to Rome. 

From England, the teachings of Wycliffe spread into 
Bohemia, where John Huss became their most noted champion. 
Substantially, the creed of these Reformers was that of Pro- 



30 

testantism — that is, Scriptural Christianity, as taught in the 
New Testament, rather than Romanism, as taught by popes. 

In 1412, Huss was excommunicated by John XXIII., the 
Pope who was convicted by the Council of Constance, of 
"homicide, rape, arson ? and incest" and of "a sin more griev- 
ous still than these." 

According to the verdict of the Council, the Pope had 
been "precocious in almost every kind of depravity;''' had 
been guilty of torturing, and massacreing innocent Catholic 
citizens; had poisoned his predecessor, Alexander V.; had been 
guilty of innumerable acts of fornication, adultery, and "sins 
of most abominable impurity;" that he had "sold the sacred 
relics of John the Baptist, in the convent of St. Sylvester, for 
1,500 ducats;" and that he had stubbornly maintained "that 
there was no future or resurrection, and that the souls of men 
perish with their bodies, like brutes." 

And this was the infallible Vicar-of- Christ and Christ- 
veiled-in-the-flesh, who consigned John Huss to hell. 

The Council deposed Pope John, on the ground that "he 
is universally regarded as the oppressor of the poor, a per- 
verter of justice, the supporter of iniquity, the defender of 
Simonists, the bond of vice, the enemy of all virtue, the 
mirror of infamy, as well as a slave of lasciviousness," &c. 
(Von derHardt, IV., 197.) 

The Council having deposed this monster, this "devil 
incarnate,"" as they themselves said he was called, burnt John 
Hitss, because the heroic Bohemian Catholic refused to take 
his religion from just such monsters — asserting his right to 
get his Christianity from the Bible ! 

Pope John XXIII. had been elected according to the forms 
which had gradually usurped the free choice of laymen and 
ecclesiastics combined: he was a typical product of such a 
system — a system which encourages personal ambition and 
offers the most tempting opportunities for intrigue, bribery, 
bargaining, and unholy combination. He had been inaugu- 
rated with all the solemnities which impose upon the popular 
mind; and the anointment with consecrated oil had made him 
a Vicar of Christ as truly as oil can achieve that triumph for 
any twentieth century Italian. 

Nevertheless, he accepted his deposition as a matter of 
justice, and made a written confession of the crimes imputed 
to him. 

(See, Gillette "John Huss." Vol. 1. p. 520.) 



31 

If the "Sacred College" could make such a mistake as this, 
in electing John XXIII.. who can say how many similar 
mistakes had been made before, and how many, since? 

Necessarily, the numerous decrees of such a pope could not 
be "infallible :" what^ then, becomes of the general foundation 
of the doctrine? He had been Pope, universally acknowledged 
as such: have we popes de facto 5 and not de jure? 

John Huss had come to Constance, under the safe conduct 
of the Emperor Sigismond. Although the imperial honor 
was pledged, the friends of the intrepid Eeformer implored 
him not to put himself in the power of the ravening priests 
of Rome. But, like Luther at a later day, he was not afraid, 
and he took his way to Constance, where he was soon deprived 
of liberty, then closely confined, and then harshly impris- 
oned. 

After the deposition of the Pope, the prisoner wrote to 
his adherents — - 

"Courage ! You can now give an answer to those preachers 
who declare that the Pope is God on earth; that he can sell 
the- sacraments, as the Canonists assert; that he is the head 
and heart of the church by vivifying it spiritually ; that he is 
the fountain from which all virtue and excellence issue; that 
he is the sun of the Holy Ghost, and sure asylum where all 
Christians ought to find refuge. 

"Behold ! Already is this head severed, as it were, with 
the sword; already is this terrestial God bound in chains; 
already are his sins unveiled — the gushing fountain is dried 
up — the heavenly sun is dimmed — the heart is torn out, that 
no one may again seek an asylum there." 

(Huss' Epistles, XIII.) 

Casuistry never undertook a harder task_ than when it 
sought to escape the difficulties made for popery by the Coun- 
cil of Constance. If the Pope is God-on-earth, who can accuse, 
try, condemn, and deprive him of his God-ship? 

If the Council did wrong in deposing John, then this God- 
on-earth was a murderer, an adulterer, an incestuous forni- 
cator, and a sodomist — for that is the unnamed crime of which 
John was convicted. 

If the Council was right, then the consecration and anoint- 
ing failed of its efficacy: an impostor wore the papal crown, 
and had his foot kissed. From such a polluted source, no 
infallibility or spiritual graces could flow. No line of 



32 

unbroken succession from Apostolic ages could be traced 
through such a man. 

Pope Joan^ herself, could not present a greater stumbling 
block to papal pretensions. If the Council was right, the 
Sacred College is like any other electoral body, subject to 
human errors. The halo of inspiration and divinity fades; 
and the "sacred" voters become mere profane vessels, full of 
uncleanlmess. In short, if the Council was right, the entire 
stupendous imposture of papalisni topples. 

On the contrary, if the Council was wrong, it is possible 
for the Eoman Pontiff — who, after his inauguration, is claimed 
to be u Christ-veiled-in-the-flesh" — to be utterly without faith 
in the immorality of the soul, utterly without the common 
virtues of decent manhood, and not only abdicted to drunk- 
enness, gluttonous living, and bribe-taking, but degraded by 
homicide, adultery, incest, and the sin of Sodom ! 

Verily, the casuistry of the Jesuit runs against a snag, in 
the Council of Constance ! 



33 



CHAPTER VI. 

Charges against Huss ; His defense; He takes his stand upon the 
Bible; The Emperor Sigismond violates his "safe conduct;" 
John Huss burnt at the stake. 

The first charge against John Huss was, that he had taught 
that, even after the words of consecration in the celebration 
of the Lord's Supper, the tread remained HUE AD. 

This accusation was formally proved by four witnesses. 

In answer to this, the prisoner drew a distinction between 
"bresd," and "•material bread." which the modern mind finds 
it difficult to consider with patience. Like Luther's later 
doctrine of "consubstantiation," Huss' conception of the Last 
Supper was the natural hesitation of the Catholic clergyman 
in breaking wholly with a teaching which had been a part of 
his youthful education. Huss explained that when the Arch- 
bishop of Prague had prohibited the use of the word "bread,' 1 
he (Huss) could not approve this mandate of the Archbishop, 
because Christ had spoken of himself, eleven tijnes, as the 
bread of angels that came down from heaven to give life to 
the world, but that Christ had never in these instances spoken 
of Mmrbself as material bread. 

The thought in the mind of Huss was really the same 
as that which afterwards restored the usage of the uncorrvpted 
Primitive Church, and celebrated the Last supper as a com- 
memorative rite. 

Another charge against Huss was, that he had taught the 
following: 

"If a pope is wicked, or, more, a reprobate, then, like the 
Apostle Judas, he is a devil, a thief, and a son of perdition, 
not the head of the holy church, militant; since he is not, in 
fact, a member of the militant church." 

Huss replied to this by reading from his books, in which 
he had maintained that a reprobate pope was a false shep- 
herd, like unto those of whom Christ spoke. He cited John 
XXIII. as an example of a false shepherd, a reprobate pope, 
and his apt reference must have added immensely to the rage 
and murderous intent of his enemies in the Council. 

Another charge against the Reformer, was his teaching 
that "Peter was not universal pastor, or shepherd of the sheep 
of Christ ; much less. Pope of Rome." 



34 

Huss read from his book, in which he had set forth the 
truth as manifest in the New Testament, namely, the equality 
of the Apostles, each being as much Christ's vicar as any 
other. 

In truth, the real charge against the Bohemian was, that 
he was a disciple of Wyckliffe, virtually a Protestant. Every 
accusation hinged on that, and every debate revolved 
around it. 

Condemned before his trial commenced, Huss was sub- 
jected to many trying days in the Council; and when he had 
met his enemies at every point, retracting not one jot or tittle 
of his doctrine, every pressure — imperial and ecclesiastical — 
was brought to bear upon him to compel him to recant: They 
somewhat realized the dangerous consequences upon public 
opinion, of murdering a stainless Catholic priest, in violation 
of the Emperor's safe-conduct, and of letting him die as a 
martyr to the Scriptural opinions he had so valiantly 
defended. 

Concerning this, Huss wrot^to his friends: 

"They have attempted to frighten me from the truth of 
Christ, but the strength of God in me, they have been unable 
to overcome 

"They would not venture to debate with me, on the author- 
ity of the sacred Scriptures, although I professed my willing- 
ness to be instructed. 

"Not by the Holy Scriptures, but by threats, and terrors, 
have they tried to conquer me. 

"But the God of mercy, to whose word I bow, is with me, 
and still will be, as I believe, and in His grace will keep me 
even until death." 

It will be seen that the great Bohemian took his stand 
upon the ground where Luther afterwards stood at the Diet 
of Worms — upon the Bible ! 

"Show me where Holy Writ proves me to be wrong, and 
I will recant!" 

What answer has Rome ever made to a man like that, 
except to poison him. starve him in a dungeon, cut him down 
with a sword, rack his limbs apart on the wheel, clasp him 
in the deadly embrace of the Iron Virgin, beat out his brains 
with a bludgeon, choke out his life with a rope, or burn his 
quivering flesh to ashes at the stake? 

When the murderous Harlot of the Tiber loses her fangs, 
and can no longer tear Bible Christians to pieces, she vents 



35 



her impotent rage in sewerlike torrents of virulent abuse, 
saying that the mother of Luther bedded with a demon; that 
Calvin's death-hour was maddened by remorse ; and that devils 
from the pit haunted the last hours of John Knox. 




BURNING A BIBLE CHRISTIAN, 



Verity, Satan never was better served than he has been 
by this hideous system of paganized "Christianity." 

In his final appearance before the Council, Huss said — 

"I came hither freely^ relying upon the public faith of the 
Emperor, who is here present, assuring me that I should be 
safe from all violence." 

As the doomed Bohemian spoke these words, he paused, 



36 

and fixed his eyes steadily upon those of the perjured Emperor. 

"A deep blush at once mounted to the imperial brow. 
Sigismond felt the shame and meanness of which he had been 
guilty." 

(Mon. Hus. II., 346. Cited Gillett's Huss, II., 55.) 

Chained to a stake, the Reformer suffered his martyrdom 
in the midst of blazing fagots; his voice could be heard 
in prayer, as long as he was conscious. As the pile burned 
low, his charred body could be seen hanging in its chains. 
They heaped new fuel on the sinking flames, and broke the 
skeleton with clubs, in order that the bones might sooner 
become ashes. The head fell down, and rolled out of the 
rim of fire. They beat it back into the flames. His heart was 
spitted with a sharp piece of wood, and so held over the coals 
until it was consumed. Every shred of the martyr's clothing, 
was cast into the pile, to prevent any relic from being taken 
back to Bohemia. 

Then the surface of the earth, where this hellish crime of 
Rome had been committed^ was spaded up, and thrown into 
the Rhine — and thus passed on down the currents to the low- 
lands of Holland, to the restless sea., and into that vaster ocean 
of unburnable Thought, which will forever hate the infernal 
system which murders good men in the name of Jesus Christ! 



37 



CHAPTER VII. 

Persecution in Bohemia; Vices of the clergy; A Pope receives 
Revenues from lewd houses; Martin Luther; Finds a Latin 
Bible; Goes to Rome; Shocked by priest's vices and blas- 
phemies; Pope Leo X.; Sale of pardons for sins; Tetzel; 
Luther denounces sale of indulgences; Nails his 9 5 propositions 
to church door in Wittemberg. 

The unity of the Church was restored by the deposition of 
Pope John XXIIL, against whom such terrible accusations 
were made in the Council that I dare not print them, lest 
another Federal grand jury indict me for publishing extracts 
from papal literature. 

(Of the other two Popes, Gregory XIII. resigned, and 
Benedict XIII. was deposed by the Council in July, 1417.) 

On Nov. 11th, 1117, an Italian of the Colonna family was 
elected by 23 cardinals and 30 prelates representing the five 
nations taking part in the Council, viz. — Germany, England. 
France, Italy and Spain. 

Under this new Pope Martin V., and at the instance of the 
Emperor, began the ferocious war upon the Hussites of 
Bohemia. 

Even after all this, the Roman Catholic system did not 
purge itself, and return to the standards of primitive Chris- 
tianity. On the contrary, it went from bad to worse. The 
infatuation of the higher clergy seemed a moral blindness. 
They had so long abused the name of God in covering their 
sins, and were so confident of their power to crush opposition, 
that they put no restraint upon their lusts, were deaf to mut- 
terings of indignation, and had no eyes for signs of the coining 
storm. 

One of the Prince-Bishops, Jean de Bourgogne, boasted of 
his voluptuous vices, and was served at the altar, in his 
cathedral of Cambray by thirty-six illegitimate sons ! 

Pope Innocent VIII. had so many bastards, acknowledged 
to be his. that he was cynically nicknamed "'the father of his 
country." 

Pope Sixtus IV. established a system of licensed brothels 
in Rome, and reaped a yearly harvest of 80,000 ducats from 
the industry of the Scarlet Woman. (Harmsworth's History 
of the World. Vol. 5, p. 3755.) 



38 

The unseemly and sanguinary wars of Popes against 
Kings, were demoralizing, but the wars of Popes, against 
Popes, were destructive. A spirit of mental unrest began to 
move among the common people, and to this unrest succeeded a 
desire for more light. There began to be a demand for the 
Bible, translated into the common language, in order that the 
average layman might read it. 

As a natural consequence, the priests began to burn such 
copies of the Book as were found, and a series of councils not 
only forbade the publication of the translated Bible, but theo- 
logical works, also. (See Harmsworth's History ot the World, 
Vol. 5, page 3746.) 

The utter contempt into which the masses of the people 
had sunk, viewed politically, is shown by the manner in which 
populous, wealthy and prosperous provinces were transferred 
by marriage. 

Thus the daughter of the Emperor Sigismond wedding a 
Hapsburg, carried to him the thrones of Hungary and 
Bohemia. She inherited them from her father, and they 
went with her to her spouse. 

In like manner, another Hapsburg prince, Maximilian, 
married the daughter of Charles the Bold (or Eash) of Bur- 
gundy, and carried the Netherlands as part of her dowry. 
The great, opulent cities of Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp, Brussels, 
Liege. &c, went along with the bride, as so many jewels and 
trinkets. 

The son of Maximilian and Mary (the Burgundian 
princess) was the Handsome Philip who espoused Crazy Jane, 
the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. The son of Philip 
became the mighty Emperor Charles V. of Germany, and the 
sire of that devil in doublet and trunk hose, Philip II. 

It was during the reign of the Emperor Maxilimian I., 
that Martin Luther was born (1483) at Eisleben, in Saxony. 
His father. John Luther, owned considerable mining interests, 
and was a local Chief Magistrate. Having received a primary 
education in his father's house, Martin was sent to the 
universities of Eisenach and Madgeburg, and became a great 
proficient in the Latin language. (Coxe: I., 426.) 

Repairing to the University of Erfurth, Martin continued 
his studies, and took his degree. He intended to become a 
lawyer, but a stroke of lightning having killed a friend at his 
side, his naturally serious mind Avas so deeply impressed that 



39 

he determined to enter the service of the Church. In the 
22nd year of his life, therefore, he became an Augustin friar, 
at Erfurth. 

Here nothing remarkable broke the monotony of monastic 
life, until he made the discovery which has recently been so 
hotly disputed — it never was disputed until two years ago, 
and then it was left to an ignorant American fanatic to raise 
the dispute. 

As related in Coxe's monumental and thoroughly trust- 
worthy "House of Austria," (Vol. I., p. 426) the discovery 
of Luther was this: 

"During his residence in the monastery, he discovered 
a copy of the Latin Bible, which, at that period, was inter- 
dicted to the laity, and scarcely known to the clergy." 

This statement is strictly true. What few Bibles there 
were, lay under lock and key, in the greater monasteries, or 
were fastened to the altar, by metallic chains, in the larger 
cathedrals. There were no Bibles in the convents, none in the 
smaller churches, none in the homes of the clergy, and none 
within the reach of the laity. By papal law, harsh punish- 
ment was to be inflicted upon any layman who should be 
found with the Scriptures in his possession. Good Catholics 
were even put to death for having the Book in the house. 

Continuing his narrative > Coxe says — ■ 
"His (Luther's) curiosity being stimulated by the discov- 
ery, he studied the sacred writings with extraordinary ardour 
and perseverance; and to this accident may be attributed his 
adoption of those opinions that produced the Reformation." 

His reputation as a scholar having spread, Frederick the 
Wise, elector of Saxony, invited Luther to become the pro- 
fessor of philosophy in the new university at Wittemberg — 
the young friar being recommended by Staupitz, vicar-gen- 
eral of the Augustin order. 

At this time, never a word had been heard against the 
character or the morals of Martin Luther. He was noted 
as a pious, studious, attractive young Catholic, whose voice 
in singing the hymns of the church was unusually strong and 
melodious. 

Malice simply unmasked its own ugly visage, when, in 
after years, the enraged Romanists ignored the official good 
character given to Luther by his Catholic superior-officer. 
If there was aught against the young scholar, Frederick the 



40 

Wise should not have been imposed upon by Staupitz, and 
the monastic brothers with whom Luther had jived. 

At Wittemberg, Luther soon became noted for the bold- 
ness of his thinking - , and the rude eloquence of his lectures. 
In due course, he was promoted to the degree of Doctor of 
Divinity, and began to discuss matters theological. 

A trip to Rome, on which he was sent by the officials of 
the Augustin order, exerted a decided influence over Doctor 
Luther's after career. Such was the open lewdness of the 
priests, and such their mockery of all things sacred, that the 
German rustic was profoundly shocked; and this painful 
impression was not lessened when, on speaking of his sorrow 
at what he said at the papa] court, he was laughed to scorn. 

He was especially horrified when he heard the jeering 
priests, at mass, impose upon the pious credulity of the 
worshipping congregation, by changing the words spoken to 
the wafer from. "Bread thou art, but flesh thou shalt become.'' 
into, "Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain" (Panis, 
et Panis manebis.) 

They also sneeringly changed the form, -''Wine thou art. 
but blood thou shalt become." into the irreverent phrase, 
"Wine thou art. and wine thou shalt remain." (Vinvm r.<?, et 
r) ii u in nut ii< his.) 

When the honest German scholar and devout Catholic 
witnessed these abominations at Rome, it may be imagined 
that he carried many a disquieting thought with him as he 
returned to Wittemberg. 

Dr. Coxe. throughout his magnificent work, "The House 
of Austria." displays the judicial temperament, treats historic 
personages with equal fairness, and never once reveals the 
spirit of the prejudiced partisan. Of Martin Luther's char- 
acter and habits, he says — 

"He was animated by an undaunted spirit, which raised 
him above all apprehensions of danger, and possessed a per- 
severence which nothing could fatigue. He was at once 
haughty and condescending, jovial, affable, and candid in 
public; studious, sober, and self-denying in private; and he 
was endowed with that happy and intuitive sagacity whieh 
enabled him to suit his conduct and his manners to the 
exigency of the moment, to lessen or avert danger by timely 
flexibility, or to bear down all obstacles by firmness and 
impetuosity. 



41 

His merciless invectives and contemptuous irony were 
proper weapons to repel the virulence and scurrility of his 
adversaries, and even the fire and arrogance of his temper, 
though blemishes in a refined age. were far from being detri- 
mental in a controversy which roused all the passions of the 
human breast, and required the strongest exertions of fortitude 
and courage." 

When Pope Leo X. had wasted in riotous living all the 
funds in the papal treasury, he sent envoys through the 
countries round about, to gather up a new supply of ducats, 
by selling pieces of paper which were called Indulgences, 
and on which the libertine De Medici prince, who was then 
"Vicar of Christ," had authorized to be written a full pardon 
for all sins, past, present, and future. 

According to this doctrine, all the good works of the 
saints, besides those which were necessary towards their own 
justification, are deposited, together with the infinite merits 
of Jesus Christ, in one inexhaustible treasury, the keys of 
which were committed to St. Peter, and to his successors, the 
popes who may open it at pleasure, and by transferring a 
portion of this superabundant merit to particular persons. 
for a sum of money, may convey to them either the pardon of 
their own sins, or a release for any one in whose happiness 
they are interested, from the pains of purgatory. 

As the form of these indulgences, and the benefits which 
they were supposed to convey, are unknown in Protestant 
countries, and little understood, at present, where the Roman 
Catholic religion is established, I present, for the informa- 
tion of my readers, a translated form of the absolution used 
by Tetzel : 

"May our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon thee, and 
absolve thee by the merits of his most holy passion. And 
I, by his authority, that of his blessed Apostles Peter and 
Paul, and of the most holy pope, granted and com- 
mitted to me in these parts., do absolve thee, first from all 
ecclesiastical censures, in whatever manner they have been 
incurred, and then from all thy sins, transgressions, and 
excesses, how enormous soever they may be. even from such 
as are reserved for the cognizance of the holy see; and as 
far as the keys of the Holy Church extend, I remit to you all 
punishment which you deserve in purgatory on their account, 
and I restore to you the holy sacraments of the Church, to 
the unity of the faithful, and to that innocence and purity 



42 

which you possessed at baptism; so that, when you die, the 
gates of punishment shall be shut, and the gates of the para- 
dise of delight shall be opened; and if you shall not die at 
present^ this grace shall remain in full force when you are at 
the point of death. In the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost." (Seckend., Comment., lib. I., 
p. 14.) 

The terms in which Tetzel and his associates described 
the benefits of indulgences, and the necessity of purchasing 
them, are so extravagant that they appear to be almost incred- 
ible. If any man (said they) purchase letters of indulgence, 
his soul may rest secure with respect to its salvation. The 
souls confined in purgatory, for whose redemption indul- 
gences are purchased, as soon as the monejr tinkles in the 
chest, instantly escape from that place of torment and ascend 
into heaven. That the efficacy of indulgences was so great 
that the most heinous sins, even if one should violate (which 
was impossible) the mother of God, would be remitted and 
expiated by them, and the person be freed both from punish- 
ment and guilt. That this was the unspeakable gift of God, 
in order to reconcile men to himself. That the cross erected 
by the "preachers of indulgences was as efficacious as the cross 
of Christ itself. Lo! the heavens are open; if you enter not 
now, when will you enter? .For twelve pence^ you may 
redeem the soul of your father out of purgatory ; and are you 
so ungrateful that you will not rescue your parent from tor- 
ment? If you had but one coat, you ought to strip yourself 
instantly, and sell it, in order to purchase such benefits, etc. 
These, and many such extravagant expressions, are selected 
out of Luther's works by Chemnitius in his Examen Concilii 
Tridentini, apud Herm. Von der Hardt., Hist. Liter. 
Eeform., pars iv., p. 6. 

In the earlier ages of the Churchy indulgences had been a 
mere remission of those temjooral penalties which had been 
incurred by reason of the breach of some church rule or 
regulation. Very soon, this purchase of release from temporal 
j>< nances, lapsed into an abuse, which grew rapidly upon the 
credulity, the ignorance, and the helplessness of the laity, until 
the Popes extended the indulgence to all sins whatever, and 
to the souls of those who had died in sin. 

I will again quote the dispassionate and measured state- 
ment of Dr. Coxe : 



43 

"For the distribution (of the indulgences), the elector 
(Albert, bishop of Madgeburgh), employed Tetzel, a domin- 
ican friar of licentious morals, equally remarkable for his 
activity, and for his noisy and popular eloquence; who, 
assisted by the monks of his order, executed the communion 
with great zeal and success, but without discretion, or even 
decency. 

"These indulgences were held forth ag pardons for the 
most enormous crimes; they were publicly put up to sale, and 
even forced upon the people; and Tetzel and his co-adjutors 
indulged themselves in drunkenness, and every other species 
of licentiousness, in which they squandered their share of the 
profits, and not unfrequently produced indulgences, as stakes 
at the gaming table." 

Naturally, the boisterous, shameless, and almost burlesque 
performances of Tetzel set a thousand tongues to wagging. 
When the pieces of parchment were exchanged for a horse, 
or a cow. or a ducat on the gambler's table, even the devoutest 
of Catholics might well be ill at ease, and begin to doubt. 

It so happened that several of Luther's flock sought to 
escape the penances which he had imposed upon them, by 
pleading these indulgences which they had bought from 
Tetzel, and he refused to recognize an absolution thus got 
at public sale. The matter was, of course, reported to Tetzel, 
and that impudent friar threatened, with the pains of the 
Inquisition, all persons who denied the powers of the Pope 
and the efficacy of the indulgences. He went further, and 
made preparations at Jutterbuch, as if to burn, in effigy, 
Luther and other doubters. How far he might have gone, 
had this burning in effigy been a success, no one can say, for 
it was growing somewhat late to have another murder, like 
those of Huss and Jerome. 

But Luther forced the issue, and the combat with Rome, 
by preaching against indulgences, and, later, by nailing his 
famous ninety-five propositions to the church-door, in Wit- 
temberg. 



44 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Death of Maximilian 1.; Frederick the Wise; Charles V.; Luther 
excommunicated; Burns the Pope's Bull; Writes to the Pope; 
Diet at Worms; Luther's stand on the Kible; Marries escaped 
nun, Catherine Bora; Charles V. makes war on Protestants; 
Victory of Mulberg; Treaty of Passau. 

While the storm-clouds of an enraged and revengeful 
Roman hierarchy were gathering- for the destruction of 
Luther, a lull was caused by the death of the Emperor 
Maximilian I., whose first wife had been the only daughter 
of Charles the Bold (or Rash), Duke of Burgundy — the same 
that aspired to be a king, and was killed by the Swiss, at 
the battle of Nancy. 

Maximilian must have been tainted somewhat with the 
mental diseases which afflicts all the "Divine Right" families, 
for during his last four years he added to the cheerfulness 
of his journeyings by taking his coffin around with him. He 
had never been known to change his shirt in the pres- 
ence of any one; and when he felt that his end was approach- 
ing, he called for clean linen, put it on in private, and then 
ordered that, after his death, it should not be changed. He 
also directed that the hair should be cut from his head, after 
he was gone, and that his teeth should be pulled out, broken, 
and publicly burnt in the royal chapel! 

He further commanded, that his body should be left on 
view for a day. and then sacked up with quick lime, and put 
in the coffin, so buried that the priests, officiating at the altar, 
might tread on his head and heart. 

By tliis truly pious humiliation, the Emperor Imped to 
atone for all his sins. 

The beautiful and amiable Mary of Burgundy died in her 
twenty-fifth year (1482), from a wound on her leg, received 
in a fall from her horse while riding. 

She left two children. Margaret and Philip, from the 
latter of whom was descended the Hapsburgs of Spain, and 
of Germany, who hold thrones even to this day. Margaret 
became Governess of the Loav Countries, but. although twice 
married, she died without issue. (1530.) 

Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, was offered the 
Imperial Crown, but declined it ; and. through his influence 



45 

and vote, the prize, escaping the eager pursuit of Henry 
VIII.. and Francis I., was grasped by Charles, the son of 
Philip and Crazy Jane of Aragon — and grandson of Maxi- 
milian and Mary of Burgundy. 

Under the young Emperor Charles V.. the Roman attempts 
to crush Martin Luther redoubled their vigor, it being plain, 
at last, to the Pope, that here was no "mere monks' quarrel," 
as he had insolently and indifferently described it. 

Every art of persuasion, and of intimidation, was 
employed by the high-priests to secure a surrender from the 
defiant monk ; and when all these efforts failed, the Elector 
of Saxony was urged to withdraw his protection from 
Luther, so that he might be seized by Rome. 

Frederick the Wise knew what that would mean; and he 
did not intend that he should be forever disgraced by a sim- 
ilar tragedy to that which eternally damns the memory of 
Sigismond. 

He refused to give up his valiant monk, whose chief sin 
in the eye of Rome was his appeal to human reason and the 
Scriptures. 

At length, the Pope — the prodigal, diseased libertine, Leo 
X. — dealt the blow which had once been more disastrous 
than the lightnings of heavens. The Italian debauchee 
excommunicated the German Christian. 

The bolt that had once shattered thrones, fell harmless at 
Luther's feet, and he hurled it back at the libertine who 
launched it. 

The robust sense and cool courage of one Man, broke 
the spell of a superstition that had made powerful monarchs 
bare their backs to the rods of filthy, ignorant, bestial 
monks. 

Attended by all the faculty of the Wittemborg University, 
the student body, and a large number of citizens, Luther 
burnt the Pope's decree of excommunication, and flung into 
the flames, at the same time, the c.anon law of Rome ! 

The Macmillan Company (New York and London) have 
recently published a selection of the Letters of Martin 
Luther; and on pages 57, 8. and 9. there is his celebrated 
reply to the papal bull of excommunication. 

After ironically telling Leo what a good man he is, 
and how deplorable it is that so pure a Christian as Leo 
should find himself in the midst of lions, as Daniel did, 
and of scorpions, as Ezekiel did, Luther, denounces the 



46 

Court of Rome as a Sodom, Gomorrah, and Babylon: once, 
the gate of heaven; now, the very jaw.s of hell. 

Then he writes — 

"I long for peace, that I may have quiet to devote to 
better studies. 

"It is needless to ask me to retract, for I will not, nor 
■can I suffer any interference with my interpretation of the 
Scriptures; because the Word of God must not be bound. 

"Therefore, most holy father, do not listen to the sweet 
music of those who tell thee that thou are not a mere man, 
who has everything at his disposal. That is not the case. 
Thou are not lord over all." 

To make this epistle all the more acceptable to the Pope. 
the German monk sends him "a little book" to read, the title 
of said small volume being, "The Freedom of a Christian 
Man." 

Luther adds that he is poor, and has nothing else that 
he can send to Rome "by which I can show my devotion ti> 
your holiness, but thou requirest only spiritual welfare." 

As Leo spent the greater part of his time hunting game, 
feasting at elegant banquets, talking to skeptical literary 
men, and running after loose women, his disgust at Luther's 
gift of "the little book" can be readily imagined. 

All the world knows how the Emperor Charles V. at 
length summoned "the obstinate and pestilent monk" to the 
Diet of Worms, sending him at the same time a safe con- 
duct for his protection. Luther's friends were greatly 
alarmed, and predicted for him the fate of John Huss. But 
the fearless German was not to be terrified : "I am law- 
fully summoned, and I will go in the name of the Lord, 
though as many devils were combined against me as there 
are tiles on the house-tops of that city." 

How a multitude of people assembled at Worms to greet 
him, how his rooms were daily filled with men of the highest 
rank; how he appeared before the Diet, and infuriated the 
priests by his calm intrepidity; how the German knights 
admired his courage, and allowed it to be understood that 
their swords would defend his life; how he took his stand 
upon the open Bible, as Huss had done; how he defied all 
threats and resisted all blandishments; how the young 
Emperor himself brought his personal influence to bear in 
vain; and how he answered the last demand, that he recant 
bv the famous declaration — "Here I stand ; I can do no more. 



47 



God be my help. Amen." — are incidents which have been so 
often described that they are generally known, and there- 
fore need no repetition. 

The vengeful priests urged the Emperor to violate his 



m 



'^^^Ims^. 




EMPEROR CHARLES V. 



pledged word, and to make a prisoner of Luther; but 
Charles wisely refused. He was a religious bigot, but he 
was also the most crafty politician of his time. 

With insurrection blazing in Spain, and with a great war 
brewing between himself and Francis I., it would have been 



48 

sheer madness to have driven the Protestant princes of Ger- 
many into revolt, by an act of perfidy which would have 
shocked all Europe. 

Nevertheless, the Emperor issued a decree outlawing 
Luther, and ordering that he be arrested after the time- 
limit of the safe conduct had run out. 

To save the dauntless Doctor from certain death, hi- 
friend, Frederick the Wise, caused him to be waylaid on his 
journey homeward, kidnapped, and conveyed to the strong, 
secluded castle of Wartburg. In this remote quietude. Luther 
studied and wrote, waiting for quieter days. 

At the end of nine months, he left the castle and returned 
to Wittemberg. Having- already cast otf the monastic garb, 
he married an escaped nun. Catherine Bora, who is said to 
have been the daughter of a noble house. At all events, she 
made Luther a most excellent wife, bore him children, and 
made his home a haven of peace and happiness. 

The Emperor Charles, who had been at war with the 
Pope, and the King of France, made peace with them, in 
order that he might put forth all his strength for the crush- 
ing of the Protestants. In self-defense, they formed the 
League of Smalkalde: but. most unfortunately, there were 
differences among the Protestants themselves, and the 
.Emperor made the most of these, in order that he might 
defeat the Leaguers in detail. They were never able to 
combine their forces against him. and when he gained the 
small battle of Muhlberg (1547) the princes of the League 
lost heart. 

Luther was now dead, and when Charles visited his tomb 
in Wittemberg, the vindictive priests urged him to open the 
grave and scatter the relics of the great Reformer. But 
the Emperor replied, "I make no Avar on the dead." 

The Roman priests, however, not only continued to do 
it. but they do it, now. 

It was the secession of Maurice of Saxony that caused 
the disastrous failure of" the Smalkalde League: it was the 
treachery of Maurice that now brought calamity to the. 
Emperor. Angered because of the continued breaches of 
faith on the part of Charles, the Saxon prince stealthily 
organized forces against him. made a sudden dash at 
Innspruck, where the Emperor was laid up with the gout; 
and but for a delav of two hours, caused by mutinous 



40 

soldiers. Maurice would have had a "Caesar" for his captive. 
(1552.) 

The Emperor hastily fled through the Alps, in a litter, 
accompanied by a small escort, and took* refuge from the 
night and the storm, at Villachi. in Carinthia. 

Charles was so much shaken by this narrow escape, and his 
doleful experience during that rainy night in the rough 
mountain passes, that he shrank from another trial of 
strength with the Protestant League, which now had Maurice 
for its Captain. 

Therefore, he soon granted what the Reformers had been 
fighting for, namely, their freedom to worship God accord- 
ing to the dictates of their own consciences. 

The treaty of Passau left the substantial victory with the 
Protestants. (August- 2, 1552.) 

How the Emperor faded away into the monastery of Yuste, 
where the gouty glutton soon ate and drank himself to death ; 
and how his bigoted, dull and pitiless son, Philip II., wasted 
the soldiers and the treasures of Spain in the barbarous and 
persistent effort to stamp out Protestantism,, is a story familiar 
to all who have a common acquaintance with modern history. 



50 



CHAPTER IX. 

Amit'able relations- between Protestants and Catholics; Who dis- 
turbed them, and brought on religious wars?; Secret archives; 
Jesuits educate Ferdinand II.; Goes to Rome and kisses Pope's 
foot; Bitter persecution of Protestants; No oath binds when 
heretic is concerned; Roman Archbishop of Prague starts 
Thirty Years' War. 

Charles V. had employed fire and sword, gold and 
diplomacy, against the Reformation, and had quit the fight, a 
worn-out, discouraged man. His brother, Ferdinand I., did 
not persecute. On the contrary, he urged the Pope to allow 
pirests to marry, to return to the former mode of using both 
wine and bread at communion, and to repudiate some of the 
more fanatical decrees of the Council of Trent. 

The Venetian ambassador reported that nine-tenths of the 
German population had adopted the principles of the Reforma- 
tion by 1556, and that a system of mutual toleration between 
Catholics and Lutherans had been adopted. 

Montaigne, who visited Germany in 1589, speaks of the 
mixed marriages of Catholics and Huguenots, and of the 
friendly relations existing between the two sects. 

Micheli, another Venetian envoy, wrote, in 1568, "A system 
of mutual toleration has become customary, wherever the two 
faiths are mingled, no one cares to inquire whether a person 
is Catholic or Protestant. The same indulgence prevails in 
families: in many houses the parents profess one doctrine, the 
children the other. Brothers hold different religious opinions. 
Catholics and Huguenots intermarry. No one complains 
against it, or regards it as a scandal." 

Can you imagine a finer picture of religious amity and real 
Christianity? Do you not instinctively inquire, Who changed 
this peaceful state of mutual forbearance into the raging hell 
of a Thirty Years' War? 

In the year 1859, the French historian, Alfred Michiels, 
published a work of careful research, based on original docu- 
ments of the Austrian archives, and thereby threw a flood of 
light on German statecraft which had previously been 
shrouded in mystery. 

The knowledge of these secret documents had been obtained 
through the stealth of Baron Joseph Hormayr, director of the 
Austrian archives. For twenty-five years, he held the office, 



51 

and during that period his ravenous curiosity, unwearied 
industry, and marvelous memory made him the master of the 
inner closets and vaults of Hapsburg and Jesuit diabolism. 

In 1828, King Louis of Bavaria invited Baron Hormayr 
to quit Austria for Munich; and k the learned keeper of the 
Hapsburg archives seems to have carried off with him, partly 
in his mind, and partly in his baggage, the more important 
•contents of the documents he had been "directing/' 

The Baron did not take away the originals, but his notes 
"were copious and his copies exact: therefore, it may be said 
with substantial truth that he opened the Austrian archives 
to the world. I am not certain that this was exactly honest, 
but am genuinely glad that he did it. If Prometheus deserves 
our thanks for having stolen fire from the grudging, unsym- 
pathetic gods ; if the New England patriots are to be venerated 
for robbing the British tea-vessel in Boston harbor; if we are 
to continue to honor Jacob for cheating his brother and his 
dying father; if we are glad to owe David to the incest of 
Lot's daughters, and the human origin of Christ to the wife 
of Uriah, then we can assuredly forgive Baron Hormayr for 
looting the secrets of the Austrian archives. 

In volume after volume, this most admirable thief put 
upon the market the books which he made out of the facts 
contained in the hidden papers of the Hapsburgs. "It is 
impossible," says Michiels, "to write a history of Austria, or 
*even of Germany, without consulting him." 

In the Preface to his own book, "Secret History of the 
Austrian Government," Alfred Michiels asserts that^ "Austria 
is, even more than Russia, the head-quarters of despotism, a 
funereal goal, where entire nations are put to the torture, where 
brute force violates all laws in the name of justice, profanes 
all religious maxims in the name of piety, and abjures all 
"human sentiments in the name of clemency. 

"There reigns a dissimulation as unlimited as it is pitiless." 

This constitutes a tremendous indictment against the most 
papal empire in the world. It is the empire which remains 
Intensely papal and Jesuit, even after Portugal has become a 
Republic, and Spain a sort of half-born modern State. 

Ferdinand I. was succeeded by Maximilian II., and the son 
trod in the steps of his sire. He was a Catholic, but he had 
tio desire to murder anybody who was not. 

He granted religious liberty to Bohemia and Austria ; and 
"in Vienna, itself, "the Protestant nobles heard the Gospel 



52 

preached by their Lutheran ministers. In Bavaria, as in 
Austria, nearly all the nobility had adopted the system of free 
examination." (Michiels, p. 5.) 

Maximilian II. ha vino; ^earned that his son Rudolph, led 
astray by Spanish and Italian companions, meant to attack a 
Lutheran church, was so enraged that he boxed the prince's 
ears. 

This Rudolph in turn became Emperor, and during his 
half-insane life, the Reformation continued to spread. In 1578, 
religious liberty was proclaimed, by the Archduke Charles, in 
Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. In the whole duchy of Austria 
there were only five noble families that remained Papists ! 

Hoav was this tide forced back ? How did popery reconquer 
this lost ground ? 

It is the old story of the fearful power of education. The 
Jesuits got hold of a twelve-year-old prince, had the complete 
control of his mind for five years, and at the end of that period, 
Ferdinand II. was not only a most bigoted Catholic, but a 
most inflexibly pitiless Jesuit. 

He went to Rome, kissed the Pope's foot, and swore on his 
knees to bring Germany back into the power of the Italian 
Church. He adopted the murderous motto — "Sooner a desert, 
than a country peopled by heretics." (Michiels. p. 7.) 

In 1598, this abnormal monarch set to work. He issued a 
decree commanding 'the Catholic worship, and prohibiting any 
other. He ordered that Protestant literature be burnt on the 
public square. He proscribed the Lutheran clergy, threatening 
with imprisonment any who should remain in his dominions. 
He closed the Protestant schools, and disqualified for office 
all save the Catholics. No Protestant could sit in a municipal 
council or claim the right of citizenship. 

He re-established the monkish brotherhoods, the nunneries, 
and the use of public parades, ceremonies, &c, so dear to the 
Papal heart. 

These edicts were published throughout Ferdinand's hered- 
aitry provinces of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola. 

Then the Jesuits took the field for active operations, accom- 
panied hi/ escorts of 300 soldiers to each squad of priests. 

These bands would suddenly make their appearance in 
towns, demand of the municipal authorities that the inhabi- 
ti i nis be summoned; and then, when the citizens were assem- 
bled, with, soldier* encircling the crowd, a priest would preach 
a le*ngthy sermon expounding the Roman Catholic faith. 



- 53 

After this, each citizen of the town would be called, hy 
name, and ordered to renounce the Protestant doctrines, on 
the spot. 

If any man stood firm, he was immediately condemned by 
the priests, made to pay a fine, or banished, or beaten into 
submission. Some of the more wealthy and influential Pro- 
testants were given a few weeks for meditation; but if they 
still refused to join the Roman Catholic Church, their prop- 
erty was confiscated and themselves sent into exile. 

''The Protestant churches were blown to pieces with gun- 
powder, the walls of Lutheran cemeteries pulled down, and 
the tombstones scattered about. Wherever a Protestant had 
been buried, in the days of toleration, near a Catholic, the 
grave was opened, and the bones cast out of the consecrated 
ground." (Michiels, p. 10.) 

Protestant libraries were burned, gallows were put up 
where churches had stood, and one brave minister who refused 
to be silent brought upon himself and his wife a terrible fate. 
At Gratz, Styria, the Rev. Simon Heusinger and his wife Eva 
persisted in saying that the Lutheran faith was superior to 
popery, and they were cast into prison and choked to death, 
for ho other cause. 

To make these facts the more appalling, we must bear in 
mind that they were stated publicly and boastingly by the 
Roman Catholic eulogist of Ferdinand II. In preparing 
his panegyric on the persecuting Emperor. Consult Hurter 
recited these measures taken by the crowned bigot in stamping 
out religious freedom. 

From Styria, the crusade of Jesuit persecution next invaded 
Carinthia and Carniola. The priests and the soldiers created 
a reign of terror. "Nearly all the great families quitted a 
country ravaged by fanaticism, and sought refuge in Bohemia 
and Hungary.' 1 (Michiels, p. 11.) 

Among the fugitives was the celebrated astronomer, Kepler, 
who, like Gallileo, found it a dangerous thing to know more 
than the dirty, ignorant priests. 

So thoroughly had the Jesuits taken possession of what 
Ferdinand supposed to be his mind, that a favorite saying of 
his was — 

"Were I to meet a priest and an angel at the same moment. 
I would salute the priest first," 

Naturally. It is not claimed that the angels can create 
God out of~ a handful of wheat, and it is claimed that the 



54 

priests do it every day. The Irish priests do it, the Italian 
priests do it, the Chinese priests do it, the Hindu priests do 
it, the negro priests do it. 

Therefore, when a Roman Catholic monarch meets a negro 
priebt and an angel at the same time, it is eminently proper 
for him to salute the negro first. 

The Jesuits built a human wall around Ferdinand II. By 
day ami by night, they kept him within sight. No outside 
influence could reach him. No word to the contrary of what 
the Jesuit said, could find his ear. Even had such word found 
his ear, it could not have pierced the plate-armor of his Jesuit 
education. 

The two Jesuits who are mainly responsible for the savage 
persecution of the Lutherans, and for the crimes, usurpations 
and breaches of treaty which led to the Thirty Years' War, 
were William Lamormain and John Weingartner. (Michiels, 
p. 12.) 

For five years, the priests and the soldiers harried the 
hereditary states of Ferdinand, but during this time Rudolph 
II. was Emperor of Germany. 

In 1G06, he pledged his imperial faith to Hungary in 
granting liberty of worship. Bohemia won the same conces- 
sion in 1609. 

When Rudolph died and was succeeded by his brother, 
Matthias, Ferdinand (Archduke of Styria, Carinthia and 
Carniola) got himself nominated King of Bohemia. 

The official representatives of the people (the estates) 
required Ferdinand to take the most solemn oath to confirm 
the liberty of worship which the Emperor had, granted. 

The manner in which Ferdinand readily took the most 
sacred oath that could be devised, and then 'perfidiously broke 
it, illustrates the folly of Protestants and non-Catholics who 
think that any oath can hold a Catholic where popery is at 
stake. 

The Jesuits began a campaign in Bohemia, underground 
and stealthy. They used inflammatory literature, circulated 
among the Catholics, inciting them against their Protestant 
neighbors. They argued that the edict of toleration was not 
binding, that it had been wrung from Rudolph by force > and 
as they had a new King, they should have a new law. The 
solemn oath that Ferdinand had taken cut no figure at all: 
"the Pope could absolve him from it. Throughout Bohemia, the 



55 

Jesuits intrigued under cover, hoping to stir up an insurrec- 
tion. . . . 

The first spark was kindled when the bigoted Archbishop 
of Prague destroyed some Protestant churches, which had been 
built on the domains of the Abbeys of Grab and Braunau. 

The Lutherans, greatly agitated, held public meetings, and 
chose delegates to the imperial court at Vienna, to lay their 
complaint before Matthias. The Emperor refused to listen to 
the deputation, and ordered that the Lutheran committee of 
defence be dispersed. 

On May 23 1618, some of the Protestants, led by Count 
Thurn (who had fled into Bohemia to escape the persecution 
of Ferdinand), forced their way into the palace where the 
imperial councillors were sitting. 

Following a time-honored Bohemian custom, the Lutherans 
threw these councillors out of the window. However they 
happened to fall into another dung-heap, not imperial but 
most convenient, and they escaped bodily hurt. 

The people at once formed a provisional organization in 
defense of their chartered liberties, and Count Thurn was 
elected Commander-in-Chief of the volunteers who meant to 
fight for religious freedom. The situation and the action o± 
the Bohemian patriots were much like those m the Thirteen 
Colonies, when the Virginia farmer, George Washington, was 
put at the head of the raw Continentals. 

The first decree of the provisional committee ordered the 
immediate expulsion of the Jesuits. 

In much the same situation, Portugal drove out these incoi- 
rigible and most dangerous enemies of civil and religious 

libe in y i914, the patriots of Mexico did the same thing; and 
these expelled intriguers of Portugal and Mexico are NOW 
Twork underground, against OUR liberties and mstiMion, 

With the destruction of those Protestant churches by the 
Archbl hop of Prague, and the refusal of the Emperor to take 
cogll^of the violation of Bohemia's chartered rights, THE 
THIRTY YEARS' WAR BEGAN. 

Thus the Jesuits had accomplished their purpose and the 
most t^g c unnatural, un-Christian and protracted carnage 
S humln tv ever suffered, had its origin in the devilish aims 
and m ethocls of this most diabolical of all secret softies 

(For the history of the Thirty Years War, I must refer 
youto Schiller's great work, written, however, before the 



56 

secrets of the Austrian archives were revealed. Other books 
covering more briefly the same period, are Fyffe's "Modern 
Europe," SchwilTs "Modern Europe."* Markham's "Germany," 
Harmsworth's "History of the World." Duruv's •'■Modern 
Times." &c. ) 



57 



CHAPTER X. 

Hussites nearly take Vienna; Emperor flees; Horrible persecution 
of Bohemian patriots; Murders and confiscations; Reign of 
Terror in Bohemia; Jesuit laws against Protestants; Beware 
the hell-born secret society which poisoned Popes until Popes 
surrendered to the power of Jesuitry! 

To make my story of the Hapsburgs intelligible. I must 
state that imperial troops were sent by the Emperor against 
the Bohemian patriots, and that these Catholic forces were 
defeated. Then the Lutherans carried the war into Austria, 
and came near taking Vienna twice. But Count Thurn did 
not push his advantage with enough energy, and the golden 
moment passed. The Protestants (or Hussites) set up a sorry 
prince as their King, and this weak, cowardly creature, Fred- 
erick, count palatine, reigned one winter. His army was beaten 
at Prague, and he fled the country. (1620.) 

Ferdinand II.. in order to pacify the Bohemians, proclaimed 
a general amnesty, pardoned the rebels, and promised safety 
for property, persons and honor. This ruse had its effect. The 
Protestants laid down their arms, and the Lutheran forces 
under the famous Count Mansfeldt left Bohemia. 

Then the Jesuits began their work. On Feb. 28th, 1621, 
forty-eight Bohemian nobles and prominent citizens were 
seized and thrown into prisons. The Emperor Ferdinand hesi- 
tated to break his recent pledges and his solemn coronation 
oath (already mentioned), but the Jesuit, Lamormain, showed 
impatient temper, and irritably exclaimed. ' k I take all that on 
my own conscience.''' 

Backed up by the Jesuit Weingartner. and four chiefs of 
this terrible secret society, which kings were beginning to be 
afraid of. Ferdinand yielded. Next day the fatal order that 
was to cause rivers of blood-shed was on its way to. Bohemia. 
(Michiels, p. 19.) 

The forty-eight victims of Jesuit policy and imperial 
perfidy were* put to death at once, some with the rope, some 
with the axe. some with horrible tortures. In some cases, the 
hands were chopped off, and the tongue torn out. before their 
bodies were quartered (dire. 

Count Schlik voiced the heroic resolution of all these 
martyrs when he said, "Tear our bodies into a thousand pieces, 
trample on our entrails, but you will find nothing . . . 



58 

except that we took up arms at last to defend our persecuted 
religion, our violated constitution, and our national indepefi- 
dence. God has delivered us into your hands. May His will 
be accomplished, and His name be praised." 

The martyrs spent their last night in song and prayer and 
exhortation, not one of them closing his eyes. It was their 
Gethsemane, and none slept. When day broke, a rainbow 
stretched its radiant crescent athwart the heavens. Singing 
the forty- fourth Psalm, they walked through the streets to the 
place of execution. 

One of the Jesuit victims was John of Jessen, friend of 
Kepler, and of Tycho Brahe, and one of the founders of the 
science of anatomy. He had been physician to the two tolerat- 
ing emperors. Rudolph and Matthias. Ferdinand II. and his 
Jesuits hated this scientist so rancorously that they had Ms 
tongue torn out, before his head was struck off ! 

Another of the victims was Gaspard Kaplitz. ninety years 
old. He was so stiff and feeble that it was difficult for him 
to kneel at the block, and place his hoary head in such a posi- 
tion that the executioner could strike it off with his sword. 

Bohemia lost all her political and religious rights, as well 
as the liberty of electing her own kings. The charters which 
Rudolph and Matthias had granted, and which Ferdinand II. 
had solemnly sworn to respect, were torn up by him and the 
fragments cast into the fire. 

The language and literature of the Bohemians were pro- 
scribed. Bohemian libraries burnt, and all their precious col- 
lections of manuscripts destroyed. 

In every direction the confiscation of property went hand 
in hand with persecution. Thus, cupidity spurred fanaticism, 
and the cloak of religion covered the greed of the rapacious. 
The emperor, the courtiers, the soldiers and the Jesuits were 
gorged with loot which dripped Protestant blood. 

A few months after the faithless, perjured Ferdinand II. 
had murdered the Hussite chiefs at Prague, he set another trap 
for the unwary. By proclamation, he offered amnesty to all 
who would send in their names, as being persons entitled to 
the pardon, confessing that they had been concerned in the 
patriot movement. Seven hundred and twenty of the nobles 
again trusted this perfidious emperor, and were again betrayed. 
He immediately confiscated their property, robbing his faithful 
subjects of 43.000.000 florins by that one act of baseness. The 



59 

nobility of Moravia were bankrupted, and they abandoned their 
country. 

Even then this twice-perjured Ferdinand sought to lure 
victims to their doom by promises. To the ex-governor of an 
Austrian province, Frederick of Roggendorf, who had escaped, 
he offered a pardon. Bitferly land scornfully^ Frederick 
replied, "What pardon? Is it that given to the Bohemian 
nobles — death by the axe? or that of Moravia — perpetual 
imprisonment? or that of Austria — confiscation of all landed 
property?" 

"When threats, blows, spoliation and torture were not 
sufficient to convert the heterodox, they were assailed in the 
noblest, deepest of human feelings. Their children were torn 
from- them, and martyred, in their sight, in order to tame their 
resistance and overcome their courage. Parents could not 
behold their boys and girls mutilated without yielding, and 
then a priest dictated to them the form of abjuration. 

Two officers on one of these ferocious expeditions seized a 
naked child, and, each holding it by a foot, cut it in two with 
th( ir sabres. They then offered the father and mother the' 
bleeding halves." 

(Hormayr. Taschenbuch fur die Vaterlandische Geschichte. 
Jahrgang. 1836. Quoted in Michiels. 39.) 

The fearful significance of this detail of religious ferocity 
is, that it was a part of a systematic, premeditated work, alto- 
gether different from the more or less sudden Sicilian Vespers 
and St. Bartholomew Massacre. 

The hideous fact of the naked babe split open, and the bleed- 
ing halves offered to the Protestant parents, was officially 
reported to the Hapsburg emperor and his Jesuit advisers. 
The secret lay hidden in the archives along with others equally 
horrible, and] both Ferdinand II. and his Jesuit instigators 
gloated over the atrocity. 

One Lutheran minister, the curate of Bistritz, an old man 
of seventy, sick in his bed. was shot where he lay. Rev. Paul 
Moller was shot and killed as he stood in his pulpit, preaching. 
Other Protestant clergymen were burnt to death on piles com- 
posed partly of their libraries and written sermons. Others, 
like Laurence Kurzius, John Bereneck, and Moses Anteccenius, 
were slowly roasted over the coals of a brazier. 

One preacher named Maresch was forcibly held, while the 
brutal Catholic soldiers violated his two daughters before his 



60 

face : then they stoned him, ran their lances through him, and 
cut him to pieces with ther swords. 

With others, they first cut off the right hand, and then the 
head; some, like Rev. Matthias Ulisky, were cut into four 
pieces. Rev. John Burner was fastened to a tree, and the 
Catholic soldiers practised on him as a target until he was 
dead. 

When the Catholic soldiers saw a Protestant minister at 
large, they immediately fired upon him. as upon a wild beast, 
and his corpse was left where it fell. 

Finally, all Hussite ministers were outlawed by imperial 
decree. After eight days^ if any remained, their lives were 
forfeit. 

Jesuit hatred was not to be balked by death and the grave. 
They tore open the tombs of the Bohemian hero, John Ziska. 
and of Rockyezana. and scattered their bones over the ground ! 
(Michiels. page 40.) 

What is it that kindles this intensity of diabolism in the 
hearts of popish priests? On what theory is it explained that 
men who profess the merciful Saviour, have no mercy? 

They dug up the coffin of John Wycliffe, the Catholic 
Christian, and threw his ashes into the river — why ? Because 
he was not a blind papist, and had translated the Bible into the 
common language so that the common people could read it. 

Previously, the Book was sealed in a dead tongue, the 
Latin, and the one copy which belonged to each church was 
chained to the altar, by a metal chain, lest it might be taken 
away by the curious, and read in stealth by such Catholics as 
knew Latin. 

William Tyndale was kidnapped and choked to death, for 
the same offence — that of putting the Bible into English — 
and his body burnt to ashes. 

Whence comes this devilish rancor against fellow mortals 
Avhose only provocation is that they differ from Italian popery 
in the matter of the Christian, relit/ion? 

The emphasis is on the word Christian, for the Papists 
have never displayed against Buddhist. Confucianist or 
Mohammedan, the savage hatred they visit upon Christians 
who are not willing to worship the Italian Pope. 

(The Catholic church, you know, is strictly an Italian cor- 
portaion. made in Italy, renewed in Italy, and seeking to 
govern the world from Italy. Nobody bat an Italian can ever 



61 

be Pope, for, since the Italians got control of the inner machin- 
ery some 400 years ago, they have never let go.) 

During the reign of terror which these deliberate and 
systematized brutalities brought upon Bohemia, the Jesuits 
went about, soft- footed and pious looking, committing every 
crime sanctimoniously and with boundless self-approval. To 
the trembling, fear-stricken people, they preached — 

''These measures must neither surprise nor irritate you : we 
are only laboring for your good. Heretics are like children 
or like people suffering from brain-fever. Feel glad, then, that 
we come to the aid of your poor souls. Testify your gratitude 
to the emperor," &c. 

For two hundred years, the Austrian government forbade 
any one to write on this, possibly the most hellish era in the 
history of mankind. 

All Europe rang with denunciations of the retaliatory laws 
which victorious Protestants passed in Great Britain, to forever 
render harmless the terrible Italian Church which had so long 
been a curse to that Km pi re. Those precautionary laws were 
repealed at the behest of modern opinion, and in answer to 
the lying assurances of Rome : now England is facing another 
tremendous crisis, brought on by Jesuit intrigue, and the fact 
that Irish Catholics and English Catholics owe their first 
allegiance to an Italian potentate. 

What we have not heard about, are the laws that the Jesuits 
put upon the Bohemian kingdom. 

Consider some of them : 

"(1.) Every individual not professing the Catholic faith 
is forbidden to carry on. any trade, or lucrative profession, or 
to gain money by his labor. 

"(2.) Any one who gins shelter to an Evangelical min- 
ister uiill die on the scaffold, and forfeit all his property. 

"Anyone who allows a heretic minister to preach, baptize 
or marry in his ha use, will pay a fine of 100 florins. 

"(3.) Protestant ministers will not be allowed to accom- 
pany the bodies of dead heretics to the graveyard. 

"By spec ial grace, Protestant women married to Catholics 
will be tolerated in Bohemia, during the life time of their hus- 
bands; but they must quit the country immediately after the 
death of their husbands, and they cannot inherit his prop- 
erty. 

"(4.) All who eat meat on fast days are to be banished 
and their propertv confiscated. 



62 

"Those wjw ridicule the Catholic ceremonies must suffer 
the same fate. 

"Any one who ridicules a prie/st, must suffer the same 
penalty. 

"No one but a Catholic shall teach children. 

"None but Catholics shall make wills. 

"None but Catholics shaU'engage in the fine arts. 

"Any one ridiculing the Virgin or the Papal ceremonies y 
sTiall suffer death, and confiscation of property. 

"None but Catholics shall remain in hospitals and receive 
care. 

"Such is the immutable will of his Catholic majesty, Ferdi- 
nand II. 

(Signed.) "CHARLES. • 

"Prince of Lichtenstein." 

Nothing in the anti-Romanist code of England ever 
equalled the barbarity of this; and in Britain the Reformers 
had frightful provocation to clip the claws of the Italian 
monster, and to draw its deadly fangs. But in Bohemia, the 
Protestants had not given any provocation at all. They had 
been living in amity with their Catholic neighbors. They had 
been intermarrying with them and the same peaceful house- 
hold had been partly of one religion and partly of the other. 
Besides, they supposed themselves to be securely covered from 
persecution by the charters of two emperors, and the solemn 
oath of a third. 

The Jesuits, the hell-born Jesuits, wrought the change, 
saturated the mind of Ferdinand with cold, inexorable bigotry, 
taught him that it was a deadly sin to permit a heretic to live 
in his dominions, inflamed Catholic nobles against their 
Lutheran peers, set the two setcs at deadly enmity, and 
literally carried into practical effect their terrible and gatanic 
oath, to "extirpate" all who refused to join the Catholic 
Church. 

What are we Americans to think, what are we expected tv 
feel, when we see these plotting Jesuits — with the blood of 
nations on their garments, and the curse of their hideous record 
on their heads — flocking to our Republic, as they are driven 
out of France, out of Portugal, out of Spain, and out of 
Mexico ? 



63 

CHAPTER XI. 

Hapsburg atrocities inflicted upon Protestants; Jesuits use brutal 
soldiers against non-Catholics; Dragooning the helpless into 
the Roman Church; Outlawing Protestants; Vices, cruelties, 
and Corruption of priests; Results of Thirty Years' War. 

"No matter what their physical condition may be, the poor 
who are being taken care of in hospitals, must be thrown out, 
if, before All Souls' Day, they do not join the Catholic 
Church." 

The month of November in Northern Europe is wintry and 
bitterly cold : to throw sick people into the streets on the snow, 
or on the frozen ground, or into the icy blast, is an eminently 
Papal way to do missionary work for the compassionate Jesus 
Christ. Is there any law against Catholics, in any Protestant 
code, mediaeval or modern, which bears the least resemblance to 
that Jesuit decree enforced under Ferdinand II ? Is the record 
of Mohammedanism, or Buddhism, of Confucianism blackened 
by any such deliberate decree of a law-making authority? 

Verily, the most infamous of all the human beings who 
have been puffed up with the insane vanity of Divine Right, are 
these Hapsburgs of Austria and Spain. 

Having crushed Protestantism in Styria, Carinthia, Car- 
niola, Moravia, and Bohemia, the Jesuits next concentrated 
their efforts upon Austria proper. This state was not under the 
rule of Ferdinand until after the death of the Emperor, Mat- 
thias, in 1619. 

On the 28th of September, 1622, all the Mennonites and 
Anabaptists were ordered out of the country, because one of 
them had given a night's shelter in his house to the fugitive 
king of Bohemia ! 

In October of the same year, the Lutheran ministers were 
expelled. 

No estate could henceforth be enrolled on the official list 
as belonging to a Protestant, and none of that hated sect could 
sit at a municipal council. 

Dragoons were quartered on those householders who refused 
to be converted; and the brutal conduct of these licentious 
troopers, domiciled in peaceful homes, where wives and 
daughters were at their mercy, wrought speedy "conversions." 
Husbands and fathers became hypocrites to save their loved 
ones from unbearable conditions. 



04 

The Jesuits, Lamormain and Weingartner, thus hit upon 
an effective measure in Germany which other Jesuits, long 
afterwards, persuaded Louis XIV.. to imitate in France. 

In 1024. Prince Liechtenstein promulgated the atrocious 
decrees already mentioned; and, in order that no dissenter 
should escape, disguised emissaries were suit into the towns. 
on market days, to mingle with the peasants, pick quarrels, 
create a tumult, and give the troopers an excuse for a massacre 
of the unarmed people. 

"Let us." says Michiels, '"imagine one of these hideous 
scenes^ troops suddenly and ferociously falling upon unarmed 
agriculturists and citizens, in the midst of their peaceful 
avocations; men. women and children killed; the merchandise 
scattered over the ground, and covered with blood; the cries of 
horror, the fugitives, the curses, and the vain resistance of 
the braver among them ; the despair of the mothers, the groans 
of the dying; and then a funeral silence, a square desolate and 
gloomy, dead bodies piled upon the ground, and the last victims 
writhing convulsively in their agony!'' 

On July 21st. 1(>27. all dissenters were banished from 
Bohemia and Austria : all who would join the Catholic church 
might keep their estates, otherwise they must sell to Catholics 
and leave the country. 

As the aristocrats were those who owned these landed 
estates, this virtual confiscation by forced sale brought vast 
spoil to the Jesuits and to the parvenus that stood near those 
in power. 

In fact, the old nobility was almost entirely supplanted by 
a new order, the ancient houses being stripped, and the new 
enriched. For example, it was in this manner that YVallenstein 
acquired the enormous wealth which enabled him to maintain 
an army, and to live more splendidly than any of the Caesars 
had ever done. 

The children of such nobles as held out against the Jesuits. 
were taken from their parents, locked up in monastic institu- 
tions, and given Jesuit teachers. Even adolescent girls were 
given into the keeping of these unmarried priests ! 

Those children who had property became the unwilling 
wards of Catholic guardians, and the guardians made the 
most of their seductive opportunities. 

"Young, delicate, and timid women, adorned by all the 
graces bestowed by education, were abandoned without a check 
to the most hypocritical and sensual of men. Neither tears, 



65 

prayers, nor flight, could save them from outrage, and the 
assassins of their relatives" (who coveted their estates) "gained 
an easy victory over their weakness." 

"As for the young men, the English language will not allow 
us to describe the treatment to which they were exposed. When 
the Jesuits had expelled the Protestant pastors^ they divided 
their living among themselves; but jnot being 'sufficiently 
numerous to perform the duties, each member of the order 
held charge of seven or eight parishes. They were, conse- 
quently, obliged to summon assistants, who were obtained from 
Poland, where the Catholic priests had fallen into a state of 
profound degradation, and had contracted the most loathsome 
Tidbits. 

They unblushingly corrupted all the rustic youths." 
(Hormayr; Taschenbuch, &c. Cited by Michiels p. 52.) 

Driven before the terrible forces of Jesuit persecution, the 
patricians of the Austrian monarchy fled to North Germany, 
France, Sweden, Denmark, Brunswick. Hesse, Holland, Tran- 
sylvania, and Poland. Some even took refuge with the Sultan 
of Turkey, and found safety in the shadow of the Crescent 
from the pitiless a nti- Christ of the Cross. 

Summing up the miseries inflicted upon mankind by these 
Jesuits, who started the Thirty Years' 1 War, the historian says — 

"In this way — the building of a commemorative church" — 
these blind fanatics applauded the inauguration of a St. Bar- 
tholomew far more cruel than the first — a Bartholomew that 
lasted thirty years. 

Twenty million human beings murdered, tortured, or pro- 
scribed; innumerable families plunged into misery and despair; 
commerce ruined, fields untitled, a frightful depravation of 
morals ; so many evils and tears, so much blood, were counted 
as nothing." 

Counted as nothing? Not that, but the contrary. They 
were counted as glorious sacrifices for the re-establishment of 
Popery, the extirpation of "heresy," the restoration of absolute 
despotism — a despotism which made it death for any man to 
think, speak, believe and act, in obedience of Italian priest and 
Hapsburg prince. 



66 



CHAPTER XII. 

Wallenstein; Great soldier; His mode of life and of warfare; 
Miseries inflicted upon the people; Cannibalism; Edict of 
Restitution; Gustavus Adolphus; Killed in battle; Wallenstein 
murdered by the Emperor and Jesuits. 

"The emperor would rather see beggars than heretics in 
Germany !" 

This monstrous sentiment was proclaimed, in reply to the 
appeals of the people whose substance was being destroyed by 
Roman Catholic marauders, or devoured by the no less ruinous 
process of unmerciful taxation. 

To execute the despotic will of such an emperor, the Jesuits 
had fashioned the most terrible instrument that Divine Right 
ever used, and then broke. This was Wallenstein. the great 
soldier of the Thirty Years' War. 

Around this man's name and career hangs an impenetrable 
mystery and a horrible fascination. WJiat was he, at heart 
and in purpose? Did he have any fixed, ultimate aim? Had 
he a creed ,a mission, a secret plan within the folds of his 
outward work? No one can say. He rises into eminence at 
the darkest period of Germany's travail; he enrolls and vic- 
toriously leads great armies; he becomes the indispensable 
Captain and organizer to the stupid Hapsburg, Ferdinand II. 

He lives in regal state at Prague, where blocks of houses 
are bought and pulled down, in order that he may have space 
and quiet; he gives no man his friendship; no woman^save 
his wife, ever spends a moment with him in private; his 
officers keep their distance, and his soldiers are not permitted 
to notice him as he stalks gloomily through the camp. He 
brings to bloody failure the briliant campaign of Gustavus 
Adolphus, and leaves the Swedish King dead on the field of 
Lutzen. He beats down all the Protestant champions, until 
the Jesuits and their puppet emperor are supreme; and then 
the Jesuits and the Hapsburg hire vulgar, brutal assassins, who 
vulgarly, brutally kill him — and are paid for it, by the Haps- 
burg, in lands and purses, openly, shamelessly, exultantly ! 

In all the annals of royal and priestly turpitude and crime, 
there is no blacker mystery and murder than this ! 

Wallenstein's parents were Protestants; but their death, 
when he was a child, threw him into the hands of an uncle 
who placed him in the Jesuit College at Ollmutz. By the time 



G7 

these corruptors and poisoners of youthful minds had finished 
with him, young Wallenstein had been thoroughly imbued with 
the deadly spirit of Jesuitism. 

The year'1625 found this marvellous German already rich 
by marriage, and famous by reason of his military exploits 
against the Turks and the Bohemians. Ferdinand selected him 
to enroll 20,000 men for a campaign against the German 
heretics. 

"That's not enough," said Wallenstein; "let it be 40,000, 
and the army will support itself." 

The emperor consented, the horde of marauders were 
brought together, and under the stern command of their Cap- 
tain, they pillaged, ravaged and conquered, wherever they 
marched. To maintain such a host, Wallenstein had to ignore 
the difference between Catholic and Protestant: to men who 
must live by loot, all tempting victims look alike. 

In the wake of Wallenstein's army were burning towns, 
sacked cities, ruined farms, impoverished men, violated women, 
the wails of the homeless, and the dread twins of all such 
wars — famine and pestilence. 

On confiscated estates in Bohemia, Wallenstein became 
many times a millionaire. He received from the emperor the 
duchy of Friedland, containing nine towns and fifty-seven 
castles and villages. He loaned millions to the bankers of 
Venice and Amsterdam; and one of the imperial provinces 
which was surrendered to him, in satisfaction of Ferdinand's 
debt, was the duchy of Sagan, which, by the strangest course 
of events, is now the property of a grand-son of the late, 
lamented Jay Gould, of New York, patriot, philanthropist, and 
benevolent assimilator of other people's property. 

A strict disciplinarian on a campaign, Wallenstein tolerated 
the loosest living in camp. His officers kept many servants, 
entertained lavishly, and provided musicians, jugglers and 
other such crude theatricals as were known to the Middle Ages. 
Among the camp-followers, were thousands of bad women. 

The great Captain's eye was keen for military merit, and 
his rewards to soldiers who distinguished themselves, were 
lavish; but, for cowards and mutineers, there was no mercy. 
i"IIang the dog!" was the sentence of death to the insubordi- 
nate, and the craven. 

In physical aspect, Wallenstein very nearly corresponded 
to one's mental conception of Mephistopheles. Tall, thin, stern, 
cadaverous, taciturn, his little black eyes gleamed fiercely, or 



68 

coldly — and inscrutably — from a pale face, beneath the black 
brows of a closely cropped head of black hair; and his long 
nose came down, beak-like, over a heavy black moustache, 
hiding the iron mouth from which no kind word, no soldier- 
song, no joyous battle-cry, was ever heard — and on which no 
genial smile was ever known to rest. 

He wore above his elk-skin jacket, a white doublet and 
cloak: and over his black hat. fluttered a large red plume — 
and his breeches were red, and his boots, russet; and he must 
have looked a good deal like the Devil. 

He hanged one of his upper servants for having awakened 
him without orders; and he caused one of his officers to be 
secretly •"removed," because he persisted in wearing spurs 
which clanked when he came to the chief. His servants were 
naturally not given to prattling in the palace; and a dozen 
patrols were ever on duty to assure tranquility; and when the 
great Captain was at Prague, chains were stretched across the 
streets in his neighborhood, to shut out carts, drays, wagons, 
and noisy pedestrians. If dogs barked, or cows lowed, or 
roosters crowed, in the hearing of Wallenstein, they did not 
live, long. 

In the year 1629, the army of this most extraordinary man 
numbered 150,000. They were a devastating horde of Vandals. 
The common people. Catholic and Protestant, were stripped 
bare, with inexorable impartiality. The peasants starved, and 
the soldiers feasted. So frightful were the sufferings which 
were inflicted upon Germany, that the Archduke Leopold wroto 
to hi- brother, the emperor — 

; 'The soldiers burn, violate, massacre, cut oft' noses and 
cars, break windows and stoves, torture the poor, and plunder 
their resources." 

Such were the miseries brought upon his own people, his 
own empire, by this Hapsburg, whose motto was. ••Better a 
desert, than a country tainted with heresy !" 

••Heretics were, therefore, to be exterminated, not solely 
because their doctrines were damnable, bin because those who 
prsumed to differ from their sovereign were in his eyes guilty 
of rebellion. More than 10,000,000 human beings were sac- 
rificed to this unjust and cruel policy. The Jesuits had 
impressed upon him the devilish maxim, that a land had better 
lie waste than harbor heretics and rebels; and on this prin- 
ciple he had acted through life, and reduced the fair plains 
and fields of Germanv to the condition of a howling wilder- 



69 

ness, through which dissolute soldiers and half-starved, mis- 
erable peasants, in whose breasts famine and suffering had 
extinguished the feelings of humanity, wandered like fiends, 
ready to devour alike friends and foes. 

The year in which the emperor died, a frightful famine was 
added to the other horrors of war. So ghastly was this visita- 
tion that men, to save their lives, disinterred and devoured the 
bodies of their fellow- creatures, and even hunted down human 
beings that they might feed on their flesh. The effect of this 
unnatural and loathsome diet was a pestilence, which swept 
away the soldiery as well as the people, by the thousands. In 
Pomerania, hundreds destroyed themselves, being unable to 
endure the pangs of hunger. 

On the Island of Rugen. many poor creatures were found 
with their mouths full of grass, and in some districts attempts 
were made to knead earth into bread. Throughout Germany 
the license of war and the misery consequent on famine and 
pestilence had so utterly destroyed the morality which was 
once the pride and the boast of the land, that the people, a 
few years before the most simple and kind-hearted of Europe, 
now vied with the forgien mercenaries who infested their 
country in setting at nought the laws of God as well as of man. 
'Germany,' says Bethius, in his 'Excidium Germanise,' 'lieth 
in the dust. Shame is her portion, and poverty and sickness 
of heart. The curse of God is on her because of her cruelties, 
and blasphemies, and blood-shed. Ten thousand times ten 
thousand souls, the spirits of innocent children, butchered in 
this unholy war, cry day and night unto God for vengeance, 
and cease not ; whilst those who have caused all these miseries, 
live in peace and freedom; and the shouts of revelry and the 
voice of musim are heard, in their dwellings. ,' v (Markham's 
History of Germany, pps. 311-12.) 

In Harmsworth's admirable "History of the "World," (Vol. 
VI., p .4410) we are told that Germany was at this period a 
land of desolation. One-half of the inhabitants butchered, 
four-fifths of all the domestic animals destroyed, houses by 
the hundreds of thousands burned, "starving men in whom all 
feeling for the benefits of society is dead, and who have sunk to 
the degradation of cannibalism" — such is the hideous picture 
of Jesuit-Papist-Absolutist vengeance, upon a people that had 
dared to indulge in freedom of conscience. 

In March, 1629, the Jesuits struck a deeper blow in the 
famous "Edict of Restitution" which ordered the immediate 



70 

restoration to the Romanist clergy of all the property they had 
lost during the previous twenty-seven years. 

The effect of this Edict may be imagined, if we can realize 
what would happen in Mexico, if the President of the United 
States should heed the Roman Catholic prelates who are now 
(1 ?manding that our Government order the restoration of the 
ill-gotten wealth which Spanish priests lost. when, in 1857. 
the Juarez patriots triumphed. 

The ruthless Edict which the Jesuits had wrung from 
Ferdinand II. was ruthlessly executed by as brutal a soldiery 
as ever made militarism hateful. 

It was at this period of woe, rapine and slaughter that 
Gustavus Adolphus, with a small Swedish army, came to the 
rescue of German Protestants. He was not able, however, to 
save the city of Madgeburg. It fell to the Papist army of 
Pappenheim and Tilly, and the fearful scenes that folowed 
its capture, excite horror in all who read. 

"Men, women and children were murdered, or driven back 
into the flames. "Women were outraged in the sight of their 
husbands, daughters at the feet of their mothers. The Croats 
amused themselves by hurling children into the flames; while 
Tilly's dragoons transfixed nurslings to their mothers' breasts 
with their sabres." 

Pappenheim wrote to the Hapsburg emperor, that he was 
sorry "we had not, as spectators, your imperial majesty and 
consort." 

When Tilly entered the smoking city, 6,000 corpses were 
thrown into the river to clear a passage for him. Out of a 
population of 31,000, only 5,000 survived the massacre. Dur- 
ing the long seige, the starving wretches had actually resorted 
to cannibalism, so maddening was their distress. Catholic 
historians have themselves chronicled this ghastly truth, and 
have gloated over it. (May, 1631.) 

(See, Schiller's Thirty Years' War. Mitchell's Life of 
Wallenstein. Markham's "Germany.") 

At the battle of Lutzen, in 1632, Wallenstein was technically 
defeated; but as the Swedish hero and Protestant champion 
was killed, the Papal cause reaped the substantial fruits of 
victory. 

Once before, the Jesuits and the Hapsburg emperor had 
thought they could dispense with Wallenstein, and he had been 
disgraced: but events having again made him an imperious 
necessity, they had fawned upon him, pleaded with him, sur- 



71 

rendered implicitly to all his conditions, and placed the fate 
of the empire in his hands. Now, however, the tide had 
decisively turned against the Lutherans : the Protestant forces 
seemed hopelessly vanquished, and Papalism permanently 
established. It was time to rid the Jesuits of a former pupil 
who had grown to hate them so implacably that he would not 
tolerate a priest in his camp or palace— time to rid a cowardly 
and perfidious Hapsburg of a subject who had heaped too 
many favors upon the head of an ungrateful prince. 

Lulling the great Captain by flatering letters, the emperor 
signed an order for his assassination ; and it gives an American 
a queer feeling to read the names of the murderers— for they 
ere Irish Catholics. 



72 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

Death of Ferdinand II.; Jesuits rule his son and successor; Jesuits 
rule continues in Leopold I., the imbecile; Hungarians save 
Vienna; Emperor's ingratitude to John Sobieski; Prince 
Eugene's brilliant career; Hungarian atrocities begin; Jesuits 
torture, murder and confiscate; Laws of Austria conform to 
Roman Inquisition. 

Ferdinand II., the Nero of Koman Catholicism, died in 
1637, in the, odor of sanctity, and with a lighted candle in his 
hand. The twelve million Christian Germans whom he had 
butchered in the name of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and 
the Italian Pope, did not haunt his dying hours, any more 
than they awoke remorse in the Jesuits who had taught the 
imbecile that the only true way to get to Heaven, was to murder 
people that did not join the Catholic Church. 

Ferdinand II. was succeeded by a son, of whom it may be 
said that he was even more of a besotted slave of the priests 
than his father had been. 

For another eleven years, the hideous war went on; and 
then the Jesuits and Hapsburg fell, before the combined powers 
of Sweden and France. 

By the Peace of Westphalia (1G48), Austria lost a portion 
of the empire, and the Protestants won freedom of worship. 
But the Jesuits held their grip on Austria itself, and, with the 
exception of brief intervals, they have held it ever since. 

Ferdinand III. passed from earth in due course, and 
another Hapsburg entered into the service of the Jesuits. His 
name is known to history as Leopold, and he was a most thor- 
oughly Jesuitized prince, very morning he heard three masses, 
one after the other; and his prayers were so long and so fervid 
that he was supposed to have callosities on his sacred knees. 
On the approach of a priest, the emperor always took off his 
hat. His devotions during Lent were so tremendous, that 
foreign ambassadors — Catholics, but not crazy — resigned their 
office, rather than go through such an ordeal. 

In Leopold, the Hapsburg facial deformity appeared in 
exaggerated form, as it did in some of the Spanish members 
of the family. His under jaw projected, so that the sacred 
mouth could not be closed over the teeth; and therefore he 
could neither chew his food properly, nor speak plainly. His 
sacred head was small, and his thin hair was white. His sacred 



73 

little legs were weak, and he tottered as he walked. He was 
below the middle height, and wore a tall head-dress, known 
as the peruke. His prodigious, deformed chin was adorned by 
a scraggy, sparse growth of black hairs, which were nature's 
effort at a beard. To complete the charms of this Divine 
Right monarch, he played the flute, and operated a turning- 
lathe. He believed in fortune-telling, divination, alchemy and 
miracles. 

This Hapsburg reigned half a century, and was engaged in 
five great wars, but he was never seen anywhere near a battle- 
field. He was never even seen in camp. Wrapped around by 
the ceremonial of court etiquette, this rickety creature had no 
will of his own, nor any knowledge of current events, save that 
which was sifted through his screen of Jesuits. 

By accident of birth, a hideous imbecile controlled the 
destinies of millions of intelligent human beings, each of whom 
was a better man than himself. He devoured their substance 
with his taxes. A million husbandmen toiled year in and out, 
living in penurious frugality, to feed and pamper the gaudy 
courtiers Avho buzzed about the corridors and salons of the 
palace in Vienna. This sceptered idiot plunged nations into 
wars, and sent his subjects to fight, suffer, and die in prolonged 
struggles about whose causes and motives they knew nothing 
at all. 

For his success, great generals planned campaigns and won 
immortal victories — and were hardly permitted to kneel at 
his feet and kiss his hand. John Sobieski, King of Poland, 
beat back the Turks and saved Leopold's throne, after Leopold 
himself had ingloriously fled from Vienna ; and then the cow- 
ardly emperor refused to shake hands with his savior, because 
Sobieski was a king by election, and not by birth ! 

In a leter written from the army before Vienna, Sobieski 
describes with just indignation the haughty, ungrateful con- 
duct of the Hapsburg emperor, saying — 

"I paid my compliments to him in Latin, and he replied in 
the same idiom, with phrases already prepared. ... I 
presented my son to him, who advanced and saluted him. The 
emperor did not even lift his hand to his hat." 

In other words, this Hapsburg who had run away from 
his capital at the approach of the Turks, and who owed his 
kingdom to the Polish army, would not condescend to notice 
the son of the elected monarch of Poland ! 



74 

Sobieski continues — "The Viovode of Gallicia led the 
emj^eror through my army ; but our soldiers were irritated by 
his haughtiness. They complained bitterly because he did not 
display the least gratitude for their fatigues and privations, 
not even simply lifting the hat." 

Speaking of how the Austrian courtiers had thronged his 
tent before the great battle, and how they then avoided him 
after he had saved the emperor, Sobieski adds — "Everybody 
is disheartened ; we wish that we had never helped the emperor, 
but that this haughty race (the Hapsburgs) had been 
eternally confounded." 

Another brilliant soldier who fought and triumphed for 
the cowardly idiot, Leopold I., was Prince Eugene, celebrated 
in the Western World, as the companion-at-arms of Marl- 
borough. In August, 1697, the Austrian forces under Eugene 
defeated the Turks at Zenta on the Theiss, inflicting a loss 
that was almost unprecedented for those times, 30,000 men, 
80 cannon, and 423 standards. 

After putting his army into winter quarters, the adventur- 
ous Eugene formed a flying column of 4,000 cavalry, 2,600 
infantry, and 12 guns, and dashed over the Balkans, and 
penetrated as far as Sarajevo. 

These were the first troops from the West to invade the 
Turkish dominions; and it is curious to note that the world- 
war now deluging so many nations with blood, originated in 
A ustrian-J esuit persecutions in that identical territory. 

The crushing blow given to Turkey at Zenta, led to the 
peace of Carlowitz (January, 1699,) whereby the Hapsburgs 
obtained the kingdom of Hungary, excepting Banat, Transyl- 
vania, and Slavonia. 

(See Harmsworth's History, Vol, 6, p. 4445.) 

Already, the Jesuits had been at work in upper Hungary, 
where a brother of the ferocious Cardinal Caraffa had been 
appointed Commandant. In applying for this authority over 
the doombed country, Antonia Caraffa (a Neapolitan) said to 
the imperial court: 

"If I believed I had in my whole body a single drop of 
blood favorable to the Hungarians, I would have my veins 
opened. Let me be employed, then, to subdue them ! / laugh 
at their immunities, their laws, their judicial forms, and their 
Constitution. I will make Hungary captive, next mendicant, 
and finally Catholic." (Michiel's, p. 203.) 



75 

This diabolical threat was carried out. The systematic 
attempt to do the same fiendish work, for the Hapsburg family 
and the Italian church, in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Servia, 
precipitated the Armageddon of 1914-15. 

Thus does a difference of two hundred years fail to^ show 
the slightest difference in dynastic ambition and Jesuit dia- 
bolism! 

The Hungarian crucifixion began in February, 168 <, and 
nothing that Spanish heretics suffered was worse than the 
savage crusade against the Magyar Protestants. Arbitrary 
arrests, rigorous imprisonments, horrible tortures, swift mur- 
ders were measured out by the Jesuits to all who were sus- 
pected of disloyalty to the Roman Catholic Church. To those 
•who protested their innocence and asked for a trial, Caraffa 

replied : 

"You will be tried after execution." 
(Vehse, Vol. V., p. 272. Michiels, p. 205.) 
"The most noble persons, the men of highest reputation, 
and the brave captains who had fought in the war of inde- 
pendence were led onto the scaffold, either together or sep- 
arately with victims of a lower class. Some were dragged 
out and lengthened on ladders expressly made to dislocate 
limbs; others had their heads bound with cords or fillets ot 
metal, until their eyes started from their sockets. (History 
of the Hungarian Revolution, Vol. I., p. 349.) 

"Thev were hanged bv the hands to gibbets, and enormous 
weights attached to their feet, while the hangman burned their 
armpits with wax tapers, or shook over the unhappy men 
torches of pitch and rosin which bedewed them with a liquid 
shower of fire, Thev were tortured with red-hot pincers and 
steel blades or nails were raised to a white heat and thrust 
beneath the nails on their fingers and toes. Many, half roasted 
and half lacerated, died under this torture. 

Leopold's delegate offered six hundred florins to any one 
who invented a new punishment, and one of these tortures, the 
most atrocious of all those described by the historians, makes 
our hair stand on end. Large wires at a white heat were intro- 
duced into the natural passages of the body, and after the 
victims had been stripped of their clothing. 

If the excess of pain subdued their courage, or the slightest 
word escaped from them which might be used against them, 
their execution was immediately proceeded with, in defiance 
of the ancient law (belonging to a barbarous code, too), 



76 

which demanded that the culprits should confirm their confes- 
sion when out of their torturer's clutches. Their right hand 
was first cut off, and then they were decapitated, fastened to 
the wheel, impaled or quartered, according to the caprice of the 
judges and their blood-thirsty auxiliaries. 

The Jesuits, those men of God, applauded these horrors, 
and regarded this hideous carnage with unblushing cheek. 

Antonio Caraffa displayed his ferocity to even a greater 
extent, for, while the victims were groaning and imploring for 
his mercy, or howling and writhing in intolerable agony before 
his windows, he amused himself with lost women, drank deli- 
cate wines, played dice — in short, gave himself up to joy^and 
pleasure." (Michiels "Secret History of the Austrian Govern- 
ment," pps. 206-207.) 

So complete was the Jesuit triumph in Austria, that the 
secret Manual of the Inquisition found its way into the law 
of the empire. Article 337 of the Penal Code of the Hapsburgs 
contains these terrible words : 

"As the defence of innocence is one of the duties of the 
criminal judge, the accused can neither ask for an advocate to 
be allowed him, nor for information as to the charges against 
him." 

Any citizen obnoxious to the Jesuits, or to a private enemy, 
was subject to arrest, and to trial before an imperial judge, 
who could not allow the accused to prepare for trial, or to 
know what was the charge against him, or what was the testi- 
mony of the prosecution, nor to have the aid of a lawyer to 
advise him in his awful danger. 

That system of secret, one-sided, and malevolent persecu- 
tion was the system under which Jesuits had tried, condemned 
and destroyed hundreds of thousands of men and women whose 
only crime was non-belief in Popery. 

In Article 377 of the Austrian Penal Code, it was provided, 
that the wife should denounce the husband, the brother his 
brother, the father his son, the son his father, the brother his 
sister — and so on — or be held equally guilty. 

Thus the devilish spirit of the Inquisition entered the 
national law of Austria, setting aside the natural affections 
and loyalties of the family, and substituting for the compas- 
sionate creed of Christ the infernally cruel dogmas of Popes. 



77 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Story of the Salzburgers; Driven out of Austria; Some flee to 
Georgia; Tribute to their heroism; Author knew their descend- 
ants, when he was a boyish school-teacher. 

The emperor Leopold I. died in 1705, and was succeeded 
by Joseph I., who fell a victim to small-pox in 1711. His 
brother inherited the Hapsburg principalities, kingdoms, and 
peoples, by the Divine Eight of birth, just as the modern 
fee-simple owner of lands, houses, flocks and herds, cash and 
notes, mules and horses, passes them on down the line of inher- 
itance. 

The brother who became heir to all the Austrians, Hun- 
garians, Bohemians, Tyrolese, Slavonians, Czechs and Germans 
of the Hapsburg empire, is known to history as Charles VI. 
In him, the Italian Pope and the Jesuits possessed a pliable 
and powerful tool. Of him, they made a perverted bigot, who- 
could not even tolerate the existence of the inoffensive Bible- 
Christians of Salzburg. 

The ruler of this mountain province was at once a prince 
and a prelate. He was a temporal lord under the feudal sys- 
tem, and a spiritual lord under the Papacy. Archbishop Paris 
Lodron was a Catholic, but not a fanatic. He would not allow 
the Jesuits to enter Salzburg, nor did he join the papal League 
which was shedding torrents of German blood in the name 
of religion. At the same time, he prevented the Bible-Chris- 
tians of his diocese from allying themselves with the Hussites 
and the Lutherans. Thus, the Thirty Years' War left Salz- 
burg unscathed. No blare of trumpets broke the quietude of 
those remote and lovely valleys where the peasants fed their 
flocks and herds. No cannon's roar echoed through the forests 
which clothed those sublime mountains. The miner and the 
woodsman and the shepherd pursued their peaceful vocations, 
in the midst of such landscapes, such scenes of natural beauty 
and charm < as the Creator made when His thoughts were 
moulded into snow-capped hills, azure valleys and silver 
streams. 

No army of Goths desolated those fair regions; no Tilly 
or Wallenstein wrought havoc there. 

Salzburg as an oasis in the horrible desert of the Thirty 
Years' War— a haven where life-boats rode at ease, when all 



78 

the vast ocean of Germany was storm-swept, and wreck- 
strewn. 

Archbishop Lodron ruled his province for more than thirty 
years, and outlived the era of religious carnage; but after his 
death, troubles began to come upon the vassals whom he had so 
long protected. 

The infernal Jesuits marked them for persecution, and the 
machinery of imperial despotism was soon put in motion. One 
act of oppression and repression, of exaction and spoliation 
followed another, until in August, 1731, the mountaineers chose 
delegates to meet and settle upon some plan for self-protection. 
The new Archbishop claimed the emperor's help, and Charles 
sent an army of 3.000 men. Thus menaced with the awful 
fate which had overtaken the Protestants of Hungary, and 
Bohemia, the Salzburg Christians appealed to the Lutherans 
of Prussia, Saxony and Hanover. 

This step so provoked the Jesuits and the Italian Pope, that 
they prevailed upon the emperor to decree the banishment of 
the entire sect, numbering 17.714 heads of families. 

Since the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, the ferocity 
of the Italian church had not more sweepingly outlawed a 
larger number of men; and in this case, the victims were white 
people, of European blood, and of Christ's religion ! 

As in the case of the Moors, a solemn treaty was shamelessly 
violated, for the Peace of Westphalia had pledged the Haps- 
burg to allow three years' grace to any objectionable Reformer, 
and to respect their property rights, even when banished. But 
those Salzburgers who owned no property in land were given 
eight days to quit the country, while the land-owners were 
given five months to sell out and leave. The losses inflicted 
by such a decree can be readily imagined. 

Some of the fugitives found homes in Prussia, some in 
Denmark, some in Hanover. In the Protestant povinces of 
Europe, these victims of the Hapsburgs, of the Jesuits, and of 
the Italian Pope were eagerly welcomed and aided. In Cath- 
olic Bavaria, they were watched by hostile troops, restricted 
to one highway. <md given one week to pass through/ 

Some of the Salzburgers braved the ocean, and came to 
the Colony of Georgia, settling at Ebenezer. some twenty-five 
miles above the City of Savannah, and building their historic 
church on a height which overlooks the river. There they 
multiplied and prospered. 



79 

When the writer of these lines was a penniless youth of 
eighteen, and in search of a school to teach, he went into this 
Salzburger settlement. He remembers how the broad German 
accent of the men, and certain peculiarities of language and 
manner, impressed him at the time; and, also, how highly 
these descendants of the original refugees were spoken of by 
the people of the adjacent communities. 

There isn't a burial ground in America that excites a nobler 
veneration than that wherein the old Salzburgers sleep. Every 
tomb-stone marks the grave of a hero — a stalwart, God-fearing* 
soul that would not bend his conscience to emperor and pope, 
and that forsook home and country, rather than desert the 
sacred Cause. 

"/ am a poor man^ hut there is not a moment that I am not 
ready to die for the, truth" said the typical Salzburger, Peter 
Wallner, when they threatened him with the gallows, if he did 
not surrender to the Pope. 

Write it ! Write it forever on the marble that stands where 
brave men lie ! Write it for eternity on the pages where living" 
lovers of liberty tell of the dauntless spirits that defied Popes 
and Kings, in order that you and I might be free, in hand, in 
mind, in soul ! 

Write it in letters of gold on the memories of rising genera- 
tions, so that the stars themselves may fade away, before the 
immortal words shall be forgotten ! 



80 



CHAPTER XV. 

The Empress Maria Theresa; Hapsburg and Bourbon alliance; 
Ruinous to Bourbons; Prince Kaunitz hates the Jesuits and 
becomes careful as to what he eats and drinks; Many of the 
priest-nun brothels suppressed; Shame that we allow them in 
our Republic. 

The only son of Charles VI. died early, and the emperor 
wished his daughter to inherit the Hapsburg dominions, peo- 
ples, lands, houses, herds, flocks, &c. 

Neighboring scions of Divine Right agreed to the proposed 
■change, and the thing was settled. The people of Austria, 
Hungary, Bohemia, &c, were not consulted or considered. They 
went with the lands,, just as the coal-miners used to be sold 
along with other chattels belonging to the mines. 

Having effected this salutary change in the law of imperial 
inheritance, Charles died. (1740.) 

The Empress Maria Theresa is the most popular Hapsburg, 
mainly because she was one of the least detestable, and was 
a woman who had to endure the hard mauling of Frederick the 
Great. The world sympathized with her when the Prussian 
king took Silesia away from her, v for by that time the world 
had forgotten whom the Hapsburgs had taken it from. The 
world also admired the dramatic manner in which she threw 
herself and her babe on the chivalrous nobles of Hungary, for 
the world did not then know what diabolical deeds the Haps- 
burgs had been guilty of in Hungary. 

Maria Theresa was a severely religious potentate, but when 
she wanted the help of France, she did not hesitate to court 
the handsome harlot who controlled the Bourbon king. She 
w 7 rote an autograph letter to the Pompadour, addressing her 
as, "Madam, my dear sister and cousin.''' 

The scarlet French lady replied, "My dear Queen,*' and 
these two good Catholics made wax out of that other good 
Catholic, Louis XV. 

When the straight-laced husband of Maria Theresa learned 
of this correspondence, and of the affectionately royal terms 
in which his Hapsburg wife had written to the French 
cocotte, he was so infuriated that he used unprecedented 
language to his Maria, and inflicted irreparable damage upon 
the furniture in the room. (Michiels, p. 289.) 



81 

However, the alliance between the two Catholic countries 
was made, and in the events which followed, France suffered 
enormous losses. 

Concerning this alliance between the crafty Hapsburg and 
the infatuated Bourbon, an experienced French statesman says : 

u The long enmity which, for three centuries rendered the 
houses of Bourbon and Hapsburg, was succeeded by an appar- 
ently close and intimate union, in which sincerity, frankness 
and burdens were on one side — ingratitude, craft, dissimula- 
tion, and advantages on the other; a union which was more 
hurtful to France than any one of the wars that the hatred 
between the two houses has ever kindled; a union which pro- 
duced the decadence and degradation of France, the aggran- 
dizement and elevation of Austria ; which has raised the latter 
country to the rank which the other had hitherto held in the 
order of the European powers; a union, in fine, during which 
France did not cease to make sacrifices; but these sacrifices, 
far from earning the gratitude of Austria and inspiring her 
with a faithful and sincere attachment, did not even extinguish 
her old feelings of aversion, jealousy, and rivalry." (Political 
Situation in France, by M. de Peysonel, Vol. II., pps. 13-14; 
published in Neufchatel, 1789.) 

There was a Jesuit whose name was Joseph Monsperger, 
and after many years of endurance, he grew tired of the yoke 
of his secret society, and asked to be set free from his vows. 
His repeated requests were repeatedly denied; and. because be 
was useful in the secret work at the Vatican, he was not sent 
to starve in some underground vault, One day he discovered 
a hidden chest in the panelling of the Jesuit chancellerie, and 
on opening it, found a number of mysterious papers, letters in 
cipher, accounts, and other documents. Among these concealed 
manuscripts were the general confessions of several kings, 
emperors, ministers, princesses, which had been written during 
the reign of Charles VI., and the first ten years of Maria 
Theresa. Some of these papers were copies, the originals hom- 
ing been sent to Rome! 

Prince Kaunitz was the supreme minister under the 
Empress, and his private secretary was Tobias Harrer, a former 
school-mate of Joseph Monsperger ; and it was through Harrer 
that the discontented Jesuit gained access to the all-powerful 
Kaunitz. The astute minister hated the Jesuits, and he saw 
at a glance how effectively he could use against them the docu- 
ments which Monsperger had discovered. First of all, the 



82 

papers coerced the Pope into releasing the Jesuit from the 
chains of his order. Secondly, they were employed by Kaunitz 
to convince the ministers of Portugal, Spain and France of the 
extreme danger of harboring Jesuits at court. In the end, 
these stealthy plotters were driven out of every Catholic coun- 
try in Europe, including Austria itself. Finally, Pope Clement 
XIV. abolished the order (1773) and the Jesuits poisoned 
him,! 

Prince Kaunitz was so certain that a similar fate would 
befall him y that he took the utmost precautions against assas- 
sins, refusing to touch food or drink, save that prepared by his 
own servants. 

Armed with the damning papers which Monsperger had 
delivered into his hands. Kaunitz influenced the Empress 
not only against the Jesuits, but against the more glaring 
abuses of Roman Catholic monasteries, dungeons, schools, 
legacy-hunting, and girl-hunting. One of her regulations for- 
bade the priests to allow any woman under twenty-four years 
of age to take the perpetual vows. 

In these United States, and in this twentieth century, we 
supine, indifferent, cowardly Protestants are permitting the 
lecherous girl-hunters to drag into their walled brothels 
maidens who are in their teens — girls who have scarcely reached 
the age of puberty ! 

It is a national disgrace, that the black veil of priestly 
desire should be thrown over these beautiful, innocent, and 
deceived young women. Worthy to live in the life, light and 
freedom of marriage and motherhood, they are the lured' vic- 
tims of celibate lust, doomed to a living death within the barred 
cells of the cloister, where virtue is unprotected^ where beauty 
inflames the appetite to which no denial can be given, and 
where the fruit of this hidden sin is destroyed in the hour of its 
birth. 



83 



CHAPTER XVI. 

.bjniperor Joseph II.; His reforms; Declares Freedom of the Press; 
Suppresses priest-nun brothels; Decrees liberty of Bible read- 
ing; Profoundly alarms the Pope, who remonstrates, and 
finally "goes to Canossa" Leopold II. succeeded by Francis, 
Metternich and the Jesuits; Era of Reaction; Holy Alliance; 
Leopold Foundation formed to colonize United States with 
Romanists and monarchists; Blessed by Pope, who grants more 
than Tetzel sold in the Middle Ages; Hapsburg efforts to crush 
democracy and progress. 

To Maria Theresa, succeeded her son, Joseph, an emperor 
who detested the Jesuits, and who reformed many Papal 
abuses. Among other things, he abolished 700 convents and 
monasteries. So firm did he stand in his attitude of German 
independence of the Italian Papacy, that the Pope went in 
person to Vienna to plead with him to cease his "persecution" 
of the Holy Mother Church. 

In other words. Pope Pius VI. went to Canossa! 

But the visit was a failure : the Emperor stood his ground. 
The Jesuits and the Pope had to chew the cud of patience, and 
wait for another Hapsburg, more mediaeval and stupid. 

The Emperor published an ordinance in 1784, allowing 
his Catholic subjects to purchase and read the Catholic Bible, 
a privilege they had not previously enjoyed. He also decreed 
the freedom of the press. 

Under Leopold II., Francis, and Metternich, all these 
reforms were swept away. 

Joseph II. was folowed by Leopold II., who in turn was 
succeeded by Francis, whose daughter was given in marriage 
to Napoleon — in the evil hour when the Emperor of the French 
was lured into the fatal attempt to found a Bonaparte dynasty 
similar to the Romanoffs, the Guelphs, the Hohenzollerns, and 
the Hapsburgs. 

The real rulers of Austria were Metternich, the Rothschilds 
and the Pope. The unique combination of the rich Jew and 
the Romanist church, was not unprecedented, for there had 
been such combinations between the emperor, the Pope and 
the rich Jew, at a much earlier period. 

Under the long ministry of Metternich, the power of the 
Hapsburgs was thrown invariably and without stint against 
modern liberalism of all kinds. In the State and in the 



84 

Church, Metternich wanted everything to remain just as it 
was. No such things as modern schools, modern newspapers, 
modern books, modern preachers, modern democrats and repub- 
licans, were to be tolerated. "I want the kind of education 
that teaches men to obey those in power," said His Sacred 
Majesty, Francis, to whom his imperial son-in-law 5 Napoleon, 
used to refer as 'an old goose.*' 

Metternich worked in the strongest co-operation with 
Talleyrand, Wellington and Castlereagh, to re-establish on 
firm, Council-of -Trent foundations, the glorious old doctrine 
of Legitimacy and Divine Eight. According to Metternich, 
peoples were made for kings, and the son of a royal sire was 
as much entitled to inherit millions of human beings, as he 
was to be the heir to a drove of hogs. It was the business of 
the king to think and act for the people: the people must not 
on any account be permitted to think and act for themselves. 
That idea is the Hohenzollern-Hapsburg theory and 
practise, now more commonly called by the new name of 
"Militarism." No change of name can change the thing itself. 
Militarism is the modern phase of mediaeval absolutism. It is 
the deadly opposite of free will, free conscience, free speech, 
and popular self-government. 

After Napoleon was tricked by Metternich into the fatal 
truce of Pleisswitz (June, 1813,) and had ended his career 
in captivity, the Austrian reactionary bent every energy to 
stamp out Protestantism in Church and State. He founded 
the Holy Alliance, an armed conspiracy of despots^ for the 
purpose of suppressing liberal principles, democratic tendencies 
and popular institutions. 

French troops were poured into Spain to overturn her con- 
stitution, and to re-enthrone in absolute power the despicable 
and pitiless tyrant, Ferdinand VII. 

Austrian troops were launched against Italy, to re-instate 
the abominable misgovernment of the Pope. 

This Holy Alliance indicated a purpose to even cross the 
ocean with its despotic programme, and to force South America 
into renewed slavery to foreign potentates. But Great Britain, 
as well as the United States, was determined that Metternich's 
system should not be planted in the new world : hence, Can- 
ning's aid to South America, and Monroe's firm declaration that 
European monarchs must "hands off." 

What the Holy Alliance could not do by force, the Jesuits 
and the monarchists resolved to do in another way ; and it was 



85 

in 1829, that the "Leopold Foundation" came into existence. 
The main objects of the organization were the systematic 
removal of Catholics from Europe, where there was a surplus 
population, to the Great West, of North America, where virgin 
soil, rich natural advantages, and demand for settlers created 
an ideal condition for the immigrant. 

The Hapsburg government of Austria officially approved 
the Leopold Foundation, and published the constitution of the 
Society, stating that its purpose was to "aid Catholic Missions 
in America, by contributions in the Austrian Empire." 

One of the most eminent scholars in Europe delivered lec- 
tures in Vienna, in which he dwelt upon the mutual support 
that Popery and Monarchy derive from each other. He under- 
took to demonstrate, that Protestantism, in connection with 
Republicanism, had been the cause that disturbed the govern- 
ments of Europe. The disturbance had been the efforts of the 
oppressed populations to acquire some share in the wealth thej^ 
created, some share in the making of the laws they were to 
obey, and some share in saying what the rulers should do with 
the destinies of peoples. 

The learned lecturer said — 

"The true nursery of all these destructive principles, the 
revolutionary school for France and the rest of Europe, has 
been North America. Thence the evil has spread over many 
other lands, either by natural contagion, or by arbitrary com- 
munication." 

The assembled nobility of Austria, papal and imperial, 
listened with hearty approval to this condemnation of the prin- 
ciples for which our Revolutionary fathers fought, and which 
they embodied in the Constitution of the United States. 

Frederick Reese^ the Pope's Vicar-General of Cincinnati, 
was in Austria at that time and he struck while the iron was 
hot, by publishing a pamphlet setting forth the glories of our 
Western country, and its need of population. 

The Emperor of Austria not only sanctioned the new 
movement of European Catholics to the New World, but he 
ordered that a society should be organized in every parish in 
his dominions, to collect money and remit a weekly contribu- 
tion for the missionary work managed from the Cincinnati 
headquarters. 

Immediately, large sums were poured into this country. 
and Romanism began to grow in such cities as Louisville, 
Milwaukee. Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis. 



80 

The Emperor Francis I. was the head of this Leopold 
Foundation, Prince Metternich, an active member; and the 
Prince Ferdinand, its official protector. 

The Pope was so delighted with the novel enterprise, that 
he issued a Bull in its favor to stimulate contributions. It is 
dated January 30th, 1829; and it reads so much like the indul- 
gences whose too lavish sale provoked Luther's revolt, that 
I quote the sentence — 

"Therefore, trusting to the mercy of Almighty God, and 
in the authority of Peter and Paul, his apostles, we grant to 
all the truly penitent co-operators in this society, on the day 
they shall be received into the society, full indulgence, and 
remission of all their sins." 

Of course, the members of the society paid an initiation 
fee, and the Pope forgives all their sins, at the time they pay 
the money and join the society. 

Between that language^ and the impudent words used by 
Tetzel in hawking the indulgences of Leo X., there is no 
material difference. 

More extraordinary than any indulgence issued in the six- 
teenth century, is the following declaration of the Pope, in 
1829— 

"These letters we endow with perpetual efficacy ; and we 
order that the same authority be given to copies of them, 
signed by the public notary, and sealed with the seal of the 
person of proper ecclesiastical dignity, as is given to our 
permission in this very diploma." 

This amazing document was signed at the Vatican, on 
January 30th, and was "sanctioned 1 ' at Vienna, April 20th, 
"by his sacred Imperial and Royal Majesty."' (Francis I.) 

Therefore, the Pope not only forgave the sins of all those 
who would pay the iniation fee and join the Leopold Society, 
but he endowed (he paper^ and all official copies, with perpetual 
power to forgive all sins. In the Dark Ages, the popes sold 
indulgences for future sins, to those who bought the papers 
then; and Tetzel was peddling pardons of this kind when he 
ran afoul of Luther; but even the medieval popes did not 
pretend to perpetually endow a piece of paper, and all copies 
thereof, with the prerogatives of God Almighty. 

Prince Metternich wrote to the Cincinnati Vicar-General 
in terms of warmest encouragement, assuring him of the Haps- 
burg Emperor's enthusiastic support. These two men, Francis 



87 

and Metternich, were the most implacable foes that liberalism 
and progress ever combatted. 

Not only did the Hapsburgs throw armies into France, 
Spain, Ital} r , and Hungary, to suppress the rising democracy, 
but Metternich and Francis exerted their utmost influence, so 
late as 18-13, to destroy Constitutional government of Greece. 

(See "Metternich," by G. A. C. Sandeman.) 

In 1847, when the Federal Assembly of Switzerland 
decided to overthrow the old feudal forms, and to expel the 
Jesuits, Metternich tried to unite the great powers for the 
coercion of the Swiss democrats. But Great Britain refused 
to respond. The Jesuits were driven out of Switzerland, and 
the old feudal forms of government abolished. 

The Hapsburg Minister furiously resented this success of 
democracy, and endeavored to secure the consent of the powers 
to an armed invasion of Switzerland by Austria. Had it not 
been for the French revolution of 1848, he might have suc- 
ceeded. 



88 



CHAPTER XVII. 

French Revolution of 1848; "Down with Metternich! "; Hapsburgs 
throw him overboard, and he flees to England; Abuses in 
Austria; Jesuits bring about elevat on of Francis-Joseph; 
Butcheries in Hungary; Dynasties aid each other to crush the 
people; Hapsburg disasters force reforms; Tragedies in Haps- 
burg family. 

Until that era, the Hapsburgs had kept their dominions in 
the same backward condition that the Hapsburgs maintained 
in Spain. In each case, the method was the same. There was 
no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, no unlicensed 
printing of books. The censorship over literature of all kinds 
has ever been one of the indispensable weapons of tyranny; 
and the popes have always supported the kings in this policy 
of compelling critics to remain silent. 

When Kossuth, in 1830. began to publish the Debates of 
the Hungarian Diet, Metternich had him, and other offending 
editors, arrested. 

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that in 1848, on 
learning that France had driven out the last Bourbon king, 
and had proclaimed a Republic, Metternich, the inveterate 
enemy of democracy, "turned deadly pale and for some min- 
utes sat motionless in his chair." 

He was too experienced a politician not to know that the 
cieation of a popular gvernment in France, would deeply 
affect the people of other countries. 

In a few days, the played-out trickster and oppressor had 
to stand at the window of his official residence, in Vienna, and 
listen, while a Polish speaker violently denounced him to an 
excited mob. amid shouts of "Down with Metternich!" 

To save themselves from a Republic, the Hapsburg princes 
sacrificed the aged minister, and promised reforms. In grent 
danger of being killed by the infuriated people, Metternich 
secretly made his escape to England. 

At Frankfurt, he was recognized, and a mob quickly col- 
lected; but Metternich "slipped through the back door of a 
house belonging to one of the Rothschilds, whither his pur- 
suers did not follow." (Sandeman. p. 301.) 

A description of the Hapsburg system of repressing the 
people is given in "The Real Francis-Joseph," by Henry de 
Weindel. 



89 

''The Empire of Austria maintained no less than 25,000 
first-class officials, assisted by 95,000 on promotion. All these 
were drawn from the aristocracy, and the State spent on them 
$3,200,000 in retiring pensions alone. 

The inferior offices were filled by men of the middle class, 
so poorly paid that bribery was rife among" them. The judges 
invariably decided in favor of those who paid them most. 
As to the school organization, some idea of it may be gathered 
from the fact that $15,000 was appropriated for the public 
instruction of five million children. The salary of Metternich, 
alone, was $110,000, or nearly seven times the entire educa- 
tional fund ! 

The school teachers were paid by the State < and received 
$50 a year in the towns, $30 in the country. 

The universities were wholly controlled by the Roman 
Catholic Church, and the Church in Austria meant the Jesuits. 
Driven out by Maria Theresa and Joseph II.. these most, dan- 
gerous schemers and criminals had crept back into power, by 
the favor of two women. One of these innocent tools of the 
deadly secret order, was Caroline-Augusta, wife of Francis I. : 
the other was Sophia, the mother of Francis Joseph. 

As to the censorship of the press, it was so rigid in 1840, 
that Thiers' "History of the French Revolution," and the 
works of Victor Hugo were rigorously prohibited. 

The Rothschilds held a monopoly of the railroads : a Greek 
banker had the exclusive right to sell corn (wheafj and "while 
the Hebrew plutocracy organized the plunder of the public 
finances, the poor Jews were harried, insulted < and attacked." 

At the chemical works, men received a daily wage of 14 
cents : women, G cents ; children, 21/2 cents. 

In the sugar refineries, where they worked from 15 to 16 
hours a day, men got 12 cents; women, 5 cents, and the chil- 
dren, 2y 2 cents. 

Such conditions might exist in peace, when no sparks were 
flving about to explode the dissatisfaction; but in 1848, the 
sparks were freely flying. The people rose in Vienna and 
there was much fighting; but the Emperor fled to Olmutz, 
from which troops were hurled upon Vienna. The people 
Avere not prepared to resist an army, and were compelled to 
surrender unconditionally. 

The Hapsbugs showed no mercy to the people whom they 
had so long misgoverned, and whom they had so often deluded 



90 

with promises of reforms. Between November, 1848, and 
April, 1849, 1,375 persons were cast into prison, and 532 shot! 
Jesuit machinations, favored by the Archduchess Sophia, 
brought about the resignation of the Emperor Ferdinand, 
and the elevation of Francis-Joseph. 

Inasmuch as the Hapsburgs are now depending on Hun- 
gary to save the dynasty, it may not be amiss to look back 
upon the treatment which the Emperor accorded to the Hun- 
garian patriots in 1849. 

How the Hapsburgs had called on the Romanoffs for help 
in the Hungarian uprising, is a well known story. The Russian 
army did bloody work in Hungary, and all patriotic resistance 
was crushed by the combined forces of Hapsburg and 
Romanoff. 

Kossuth carried his burning eloquence and his tale of woe 
into England, and into America; but while the sympathetic 
millions greeted the hero with enthusiastic welcome, the states- 
manship of Great Britain and America could do nothing. 

Hungary was the property of a Hapsburg, and if a Roman- 
off was willing to send armies to assist the Hapsburg hold 
the estate, it was not the business of other nations to inter- 
fere. Dynasties must stand together. The Romanoff and 
Hapsburg families had helped the Bourbons to regain their 
throne in France; the Bourbons had helped the Hapsburgs 
re-conquer Spain ; the Bourbons and the Hapsburg helped the 
Pope subdue his beloved children in Italy; Romanoff and 
Hapsburg confederated to crush Hungary; and the infamous 
General Haynau, whose name became so odious in connection 
with Hungarian atrocities, was sent to Italy to butcher Italians 
in the interest of the Temporal Power of Pope Pius IX. 

The absolute despot of an Infallible Church is the natural 
ally of the dynastic, absolute king; and such a church is log- 
ically the implacable enemy of liberalism and progress, just as 
the Me-and-God monarch is the natural foe of democrats, 
republicans and socialists. 

Twenty-five generals were hanged^ all the government and 
of the Committee of Defense suffered the same ignominious 
fate; and thousands of the common people were likewise gib- 
betted. "For several weeks, Hungary was like a vast execu- 
tion-ground." (Weindel, p. 83.) 

Infatuated by the successes won in former campaigns, the 
Hapsburg Emperor allowed his Jesuit adviser to take him 



91 

into the fire once too often ; and the collision with France, fol- 
lowed by the disasters of Magenta and Solferino, compelled 
Francis-Joseph to grant the oft-promised Constitution. 

This was proclaimed in 1861, but the Hapsburgs soon 
plunged their subjects into the Schleswig-Holstein war, in 
which Bismarck reaped all the advantage for Prussia. Next 
came the war with Prussia, and the crushing defeat of Aus- 
tria at Koniggratz. This battle of 18G6 put an end, appar- 
ently for all time, to the Hapsburg dream of a restored Holy 
Roman Empire. 

Beaten by France, beaten by Prussia, defied by the Lom- 
bardy king, Francis-Joseph was advised to make friends with 
Hungary. Therefore, in 1867, he betook himself to Buda, 
entered the ancient cathedral, laid reverent hand upon the 
sword of Hungary's national hero, bent his head to receive 
Hungary's ancient crown, swore to respect the ancient rights 
of the Hungarians., and thus earned the patriotic, loyal acclaim 
of "Long live the King!" 

The son of Francis Joseph was a moral pervert, who led 
a wild life, became a drunkard, a morphine maniac, and a 
shameless debauchee. When last seen, he was staggering away 
from the table with his paramour, on his way to their bed- 
room, after a prolonged drinking bout. Next morning, the 
dead bodies of Prince Rudolph and Marie Vetschera were 
found on the tumbled bed, she strangled, and he strangely 
mutilated and with his head blown to pieces ! 

(See "The Real Francis Joseph," by Henri de Weindel, 
p. 239.) 

The fanatical Archduke Ferdinand then became heir- 
apparent to the aged emperor; and the Jesuits held the Haps- 
burgs by a tighter grip than ever. 

They made some sort of deal with the egomaniac Kaiser, 
and entered, upon that series of aggressions which led to the 
present Armageddon. 



92 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Jesuits return to Germany, and establish control over Hohenzol- 
lern and Hapsburg; Treaty of 1878 broken by Austria; "No 
faith to be kept with heretics;" Cause of War of 1914; Haps- 
burg attempt to re-establish their empire in Mexico; The Pope's 
orders to Maximilian; General summary; Papal and Dynastic 
twins, a curse to the world. 

Bismarck had driven the black brood of Loyola out of 
Germany, but the Kaiser drove Bismarck into retirement, 
and allowed the Jesuits to return. 

By means of the Centre Party in the Reichstag, the Jesuits 
have dominated the policies of William Hohenzollern. The 
Jesuits have persuaded him that the Pope is the surest safe- 
guard against Socialism: and that a restored Germanic 
Empire, like that of the Middle Ages, would be a most holy 
and glorious consummation. The Kaiser would be a Char- 
lemagne, and Ihe Pope his spiritual prop! 

So, when Austria violated the Berlin Treaty of 1878. by 
seizing Bosnia and Herzegovina, the mad Kaiser acquiesced. 
When a hungry host of carpet-bag Roman Catholics from 
Austria poured into those Greek Catholic provinces and began 
a crusade of religious conquest, the Kaiser was indifferent. 
When the Austrian Jesuits launched themselves next upon 
independent Servia, and extorted a treaty which was almost 
a surrender to the Pope, the Kaiser made no sign. Then 
came the fury of revenge and the tragedy at Sarajevo, 
where a Greek Catholic youth killed the Roman Catholic 
fanatic and persecutor, Ferdinand. 

Although the demands which Austria laid upon Servia, 
in consequence of this crime, were harshly imperious, and 
amounted to an extinguishment of her independence, the Kaiser 
approved. Not only approved, but virtually declared that 
Austria must be left unrestrained, to deal with Servia as she 
saw fit. In vain did Servia beg for time, and for a reference 
of the whole matter to the Hague Peace Tribunal. Austria 
was peremptory and inexorable ; and, back of Austria's impos- 
sible and unprecedented demands, was the man of the ferocious 
moustache, of the mailed fist., of the German war-machine, of 
the Hohenzollern dynasty. The crafty Jesuits have inoculated 
his egomaniac brain with the mediaeval idea that all dynasties 
must stand together, and that the natural allv of dynastic 



93 

imperialism ( is the absolute monarch of the Roman Catholic 
Hierarchy. 

The Hapsburg dynasty touches our history in the episode 
of the transitory empire of Maximilian, younger brother of 
the Austrian emperor. The exiled Archbishop of Mexico, La 
Bastida, had been compelled by the Mexican patriots to aban- 
don ill-gotten property, of the value of $100,000,000. He 
thirsted for revenge, and for his confiscated wealth. At Vienna 
and in Paris he intriguel, until the French empress, Eugenie 
Montijo, was completely won over. She gave Napoleon III. 
no peace, and finally he agreed that Bazaine should lead a 
French army to Mexico, for the purpose of setting up the 
Austrian prince, and restoring the confiscated properties of 
the Spanish priests. 

In May. 1864, Maximilian and the French army, and the 
returning Spanish prelates, landed at Vera Cruz. Very 
harsh were the measures adopted to suppress the Mexican 
patriots. Every man taken in arms was shot. Maxi- 
milian's throne, baptised in Mexican blood, was apparently 
made secure by the muskets and cannon of Catholic France. 
But when our Civil War ended, the Monroe Doctrine reminded 
European potentates of its existence, and in 1866, the French 
army went home, begging Maximilian to abandon his crazy 
enterprise. Fed on false promises by the Spanish priests, this 
visionary bigot stayed in Mexico. 

His devoted wife, Carlotta, returned to Europe for succors. 
She made a frantic appeal to Napoleon III., but really he was 
powerless to help her. His own difficulties were thickening; 
and he had become mentally, physicaly, and morally impotent. 

The distracted Carlotta then sought the Pope, and pleaded 
with him to allow Maximilian to use^ as a last resource, the 
vast riches of the Mexican Catholic Church. Pius IX. coldly 
and sternly refused. Then her spirit broke, and night fell 
upon her mind. The demented princess dragged out the long, 
miserable years in confinement, and she has not yet been 
released by death. (1915.) 

Many bitter things have been written against Napoleon 
III. because of his withdrawal of the French troops from 
Mexico — a step which the United States Government made it 
necessary for him to take : but I have never read a line of 
criticism of Pius IX. This potentate had been mainly instru- 
mental in sending the Hapsburg to Mexico; and Maximilian 



94 

had gone there to serve the Papacy, as well as himself. The 
Pope's blesing was bestowed upon the enterprise, and the 
Pope's instructions were laid upon him; but when the riches 
of the Mexican church were needed to sustain this Catholic 
prince, the Pope preferred to keep the wealth, and lose the 
prince. 

Maximilian maintained a despairing struggle in Mexico 
until 1867, when he was captured, and was shot by virtue of 
a decree which he himself had signed in October, 1865. 

(See "The Eeal Francis Joseph," p. 1T3.) 

When this infatuated Hapsburg left his ideally beautiful 
home at Miramar, on the Adriatic Sea. to bother with Mexican 
affairs and become a tool of Spanish priests, he brought with 
him the commands of Pope Pius IX.. to suppress all schools 
except those of the Catholic Church, to forbid freedom of 
worship, and to prohibit freedom of the press. 

(See, Rome and Reform, by Kington-Oliphant. Vol. I., 
p. 208.) 

The Hapsburg family, then, has been a perfect example 
and exemplar of dynastic power, and of the natural result of 
the union of Church and State. 

It has contracted marriages for the sole purpose of gaining 
kingdoms, provinces and peoples. It has intermarried its 
own members, for the purpose of keeping these dominions in 
the family . It has made and broken treaties, with no other 
end in view than the maintenance of family power. It has 
dragged nations into long and bloody wars, in the effort to 
keep kingdoms in the line of Hapsburg inheritance. 

It gained Protestant support and Protestant kingdoms by 
taking the most solemn oaths to respect the right of all men 
to worship God as conscience dictated ; and, after having won 
the advantage of position, it perfidiously broke the contract, 
and violated the oaths. 

It began the religious wars of central Germany. It set 
the diabolical precedent of burning Germans for a difference 
in religious faith. It launched the terrible Duke of Alva and 
his Spanish troopers upon the loyal and peace-loving Dutch, 
who asked the Spanish king nothing more than the freedom 
to worship as they believed. 

The hundred thousand victims of this atrocious persecution, 
were Hapsburg-Papal human sacrifices to their conception of 
a blood-loving God. 

These human sacrifices were not offered as the Druids had 



95 

done, and as the Aztecs are said to have done— with one swift 
knife-thrust at the heart of the one victim. 

These Hapsburg-Papal sacrifices were offered up in multi- 
tudes of hundreds and of thousands, every month in every 
year ; and the victims were made to suffer the utmost possibil- 
ities 'of torture and pain, as a prelude to a savage death by 
sword, or rope, or rack, or fire. 

This Hapsburg dynasty plunged Europe into the War ot 
the Spanish Succession, a sordid strife for family aggrandize- 
ment. ' It was largely responsible for the Seven Years' War, 
and it was wholly so for the longest and bloodiest religious 
war that ever blighted the human race, to-wit, the Thirty 
Yp&rs' Avar. 

When the French peasantry, and middle-class rose in revolt 
against the intolerable abuses of Church and State, it was 
the Hapsburg family that sent armies to refasten upon the 
people of France the hateful yoke of Italian Pope and Bourbon 
King During all the tragic Revolutionary Epoch, in which 
democracv was battling for its life, the Hapsburgs drove 
millions of their subjects to the battlefields, where the hered- 
itary despotism of Church and State were making desperate 
efforts to turn back the progressive tendencies of the age. 

By insincere promises for the redress of abuses and the 
granting of constitutional liberties, the people were led into 
these sanguinary struggles against liberal principles; and, 
after Napoleon had been sent into exile, and the Bourbons 
put back on the throne, the Hapsburg united with the 
Romanoff, and the Hohenzollern, and the Bourbon, to re-en- 
slave the people ! 

It so lowered the standard of morals, that Austria was 
like Papal Italy: every wife had her lover; every husband, 
his mistress; and the priest had the enjoyment of both the 
wife and the mistress, without the expense of either the one 
or the other. 

During all the centuries of Hapsburg despotism, Austria 
has scarcely produced a man of genius. Her literature is the 
poorest in Europe. She boasts no Grotius, and no Mon- 
tesqieu; no Schiller and no Goethe; no Shakespeare and no 
Milton; no Rabelais and no Diderot; no Humboldt, and no 
Copernicus; no Scharnhorst and no Stein. Letters owe noth- 
ing to the Hapsburgs : science and art, nothing. Whatever has 
been done for polite learning in Austria, has been done in 
spite of the Hapsburgs. 



96 

There has been no education of the masses, no general 
spread of knowledge. The most primitively ignorant immi- 
grants that land on her shores, come from the hereditary 
dominions of thees reactionary Hapsburgs. 

They have not only choked liberty and throttled progress 
in Austria, but they have exerted their utmost energies to 
suppress it in other countries. 

They have kept Austria aloof from the progress of the 
age. The true spirit of modern enlightenment has not touched 
the corpse of that Jesuit-ridden land. There is no real freedom 
of speech, no freedom of press, no freedom of religion. The 
people have no potent voice in government, no part save to 
endure and to pay. 

Papal intolerance lives in Austria with the same murder- 
ous hatred that inspired it, when the inoffensive Salzburgers 
were given eight days to escape with their lives — and that 
was less than one hundred years ago. 

The Jesuits rule! 

At the end of his ''Secret History of the Austrian Gov- 
ernment," Alfred Michiels says of the Hapsburgs — 

"This family must disappear from the face of the earth, 
or at any rate from power, for never has a criminal race 
committed such wrongs on humanity, abused so pitilessly 
and cravenly the accident of mere birth, invented more false- 
hoods, martyrized a greater number of men, caused more tears 
to be shed, provoked more curses, or caused more wanton 
bloodshed." - 

This was the summing up, written, in 1859^ by a scholar 
who had carefully studied the records. 

After those blistering lines were given to the world, the 
Hapsburgs added to their criminal record, the Italian invasion, 
the Venetian atrocities, the attempt on Mexico, and the "Leo- 
pold Foundation" which has been systematically planting 
popery in the United States. 

Last of all, came the perfidious breach of trust in the 
seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the designs on the inde- 
pendence and religion of Servia, and the imperious demands 
which plunged the world into the greatest, bloodiest, insanest 
war known to the annals of the human race. 

Verily, Papal and Dynastic ambition halts at no price, and 
no crime. 

(the end.) 



LioriMMT ur UUNURES! 



021 384 008 




